Minkowski functionals and the nonlinear perturbation theory in the large-scale structure: second-order effects

Abstract: The second-order formula of Minkowski functionals in weakly non-Gaussian fields is compared with the numerical $N$-body simulations. Recently, weakly non-Gaussian formula of Minkowski functionals is extended to include the second-order effects of non-Gaussianity in general dimensions. We apply this formula to the three-dimensional density field in the large-scale structure of the Universe. The parameters of the second-order formula include several kinds of skewness and kurtosis parameters. We apply the tree-level nonlinear perturbation theory to estimate these parameters. First we compare the theoretical values with those of numerical simulations on the basis of parameter values, and next we test the performance of the analytic formula combined with the perturbation theory. The second-order formula outperforms the first-order formula in general. The performance of the perturbation theory depends on the smoothing radius applied in defining the Minkowski functionals. The quantitative comparisons are presented in detail.