Using the Topology of Large Scale Structure for Cosmological Parameter Estimation

The Minkowski Functionals of the matter densityeld, as traced by galaxies, contain information regarding the nature of dark energy and the fraction of dark matter in the Universe. In particular, the genus is a statistic that provides a clean measurement of the shape of the linear matter power spectrum. As the genus is a topological quantity, it is insensitive to galaxy bias and gravitational collapse. Furthermore, as it traces the linear matter power spectrum, it is a conserved quantity with redshift. Hence the genus amplitude is a standard population that can be used to test the distance-redshift relation. In this talk, I show how we can extract the genus from galaxy catalogs, and how we can use its properties to constrain the equation of state of dark energy and the energy content of the Universe.