PROBING LARGE-SCALE STRUCTURE USING PERCOLATION AND GENUS CURVES

We study topological properties of large-scale structure in a set of s cale-free N-body simulations using the genus and percolation curves as topological characteristics. Our results show that as gravitational c lustering advances, the density field shows an increasingly pronounced departure from Gaussian reflected in the changing shape of the percol ation curve as well as the changing amplitude and shape of the genus c urve. Both genus and percolation curves differentiate between the conn ectedness of overdense and underdense regions if plotted against the d ensity. When plotted against the filling factor, the percolation curve alone retains this property. The genus curve shows a pronounced decre ase in amplitude caused by phase correlations in the nonlinear regime. Both genus and percolation curves provide complementary probes of lar ge-scale structure topology, and can be used to discriminate between m odels of structure formation and the analysis of observational data, s uch as galaxy catalogs and microwave background radiation maps.