Quantifying the evolution of higher order clustering

We use a high-resolution dissipationless simulation to study the evolution of the dark matter and halo distributions in a spatially flat cosmological model dominated by a cosmological constant Lambda and cold dark matter (Lam bda CDM). In order to quantify the evolution of structure, we calculate the Minkowski functionals of the haloes and the dark matter component at vario us redshifts. A comparison of Minkowski functionals and the more standard c orrelation function analysis shows that the Minkowski functionals contain i nformation about correlation functions of arbitrary order. While little evo lution of the Minkowski functionals of haloes between z = 4 and 0 is observ ed, we find that the Minkowski functionals of the dark matter evolve rapidl y with time. The difference of the Minkowski functionals of haloes and dark matter can be interpreted as a scale-dependent bias. This implies that sca le-dependent bias is a property not only of the two-point halo correlation function, but also of correlation functions of higher order.