A light-cone approach to higher-order cosmological observables

Abstract We develop a second-order cosmological perturbation theory on a background geometry expressed in terms of light-cone coordinates, extending the first-order analyses available in the literature. In particular, we investigate the gauge transformations of second-order perturbative quantities on the light-cone and establish their connection with standard perturbation theory. Through a consistent matching procedure, we identify the second-order gauge fixing that corresponds to the non-linear Geodesic Light-Cone gauge within standard perturbation theory, known as the Observational Synchronous Gauge. We then emphasize its conceptual similarities and differences w.r.t. the standard Synchronous Gauge. Finally, within this new perturbative framework, and adopting a fully gauge-invariant approach, we compute the luminosity distance-redshift relation up to second order with anisotropic stress as seen by a free-falling observer. Remarkably, we show how divergences at the observer position can be eliminated in a completely model-independent way. These results validate our perturbative framework and establish it as a novel formalism for evaluating cosmological observables at second order.