Shrinking cloaks in expanding space-times: The role of coordinates and the meaning of transformations in transformation optics

The fully covariant formulation of transformation optics is used to find the configuration of a cloaking device operating in an expanding universe modeled by a Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker space-time. This space-time cloak is used as a platform for probing the covariant formulation of transformation optics, thereby rigorously enhancing the conceptual understanding of the theory. By studying the problem in both comoving and physical coordinates, we explicitly demonstrate the preservation of general covariance of electrodynamics under the transformation optics procedure. This platform also enables a detailed study of the various transformations that arise in transformation optics. We define a corporeal transformation as the "transformation" of transformation optics and distinguish it from coordinate and frame transformations. We find that corporeal transformations considered in the literature have generally been restricted to a subset of all possible corporeal transformations, providing a potential mechanism for increased functionality of transformation optics.