In these lecture notes I discussed the importance of phase correlations for the morphology of large-scale structure and how phase analysis can probe primordial non-Gaussianity and/or foreground contamination in CMB temperature maps. I illustrate the ideas with application to the preliminary WMAP first-year data. I also briefly introduce topological characteristics such as the genus and Minkowski functionals, and how they provide a real-space diagnostic of phase correlations.
Categories: astro-ph