Statistical analysis of large-scale structure in the Universe

Abstract

Methods for the statistical characterization of the large-scale structure in the Universe will be the main topic of the present text. The focus is on geometrical methods, mainly Minkowski functionals and the J-function. Their relations to standard methods used in cosmology and spatial statistics and their application to cosmological datasets will be discussed. This work is not only meant as a short review for comologist, but also attempts to illustrate these morphological methods and to make them accessible to scientists from other fields. Consequently, a short introduction to the standard picture of cosmology is given.