Cosmological perturbations in brane worlds: brane bending and anisotropic stresses

Using a metric-based formalism to treat cosmological perturbations, we discuss the connection between anisotropic stress on the brane and brane bending. First we discuss gauge transformations, and draw our attention to gauges, in which the brane positions remain unperturbed. We provide a unique gauge, where perturbations both on the brane and in the bulk can be treated with generality. For vanishing anisotropic stresses on the brane, this gauge reduces to the generalized longitudinal gauge. We further comment on the gravitational interaction between the branes and the bulk. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.