de Sitter Teukolsky waves

Abstract We present de Sitter Teukolsky waves—linearised quadrupolar gravitational waves in the transverse-traceless gauge in de Sitter spacetime. In the cosmological constant Λ going to zero limit, our solutions match to Teukolsky solutions. For non-zero Λ, we compare our solutions to the wider literature, where different authors have constructed linearised gravitational perturbations in de Sitter spacetime with varied motivations. For de Sitter Teukolsky waves, we compute the energy flux across future timelike infinity <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi class="MJX-tex-calligraphic">I</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> and show that it is manifestly positive.