LOOP CORRECTIONS IN NONLINEAR COSMOLOGICAL PERTURBATION-THEORY

Using a diagrammatic approach to Eulerian perturbation theory, we calc ulate analytically the variance and skewness of the density and veloci ty divergence induced by gravitational evolution from Gaussian initial conditions, including corrections beyond leading order. Except for th e power spectrum, previous calculations in cosmological perturbation t heory have been confined to leading order (tree level): we extend thes e to include loop corrections. For scale-free initial power spectra, P (k) similar to k(n) with -2 less than or equal to n less than or equal to 2, the one-loop variance sigma(2) = [delta(2)] = sigma(l)(2) + 1.8 2 sigma(l)(4), and the skewness S-3 = [delta(3)]/sigma(4) = 34/7 + 9.8 sigma(l)(2), where sigma(l) is the rms fluctuation of the density fie ld to linear order. (These results depend weakly on the spectral index n, due to the nonlocality of the nonlinear solutions to the equations of motion.) Thus, loop corrections for the (unsmoothed) density held begin to dominate over tree-level contributions (and perturbation theo ry presumably begins to break down) when sigma(l)(2) similar or equal to 1/2. For the divergence of the velocity field, loop dominance does not occur until sigma(l)(2) approximate to 1. We also compute loop cor rections to the variance, skewness, and kurtosis for several nonlinear approximation schemes, where the calculation can be easily generalize d to one-point cumulants of higher order and arbitrary number of loops . We find that the Zeldovich approximation gives the best approximatio n to the loop corrections of exact perturbation theory, followed by th e linear potential approximation (LPA) and the frozen flow approximati on (FFA), in qualitative agreement with the relative behavior of tree- level results. In LPA and FFA, loop corrections are infrared divergent for spectral indices n less than or equal to -1; this is related to t he breaking of Galilean invariance in these schemes.