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Tracing the cosmic web

Libeskind, Noam I.; van de Weygaert, Rien; Cautun, Marius; Falck, Bridget; Tempel, Elmo; Abel, Tom; Alpaslan, Mehmet; Aragón-Calvo, Miguel A.; Forero-Romero, Jaime E.; Gonzalez, Roberto; Gottlöber, Stefan; Hahn, Oliver; Hellwing, Wojciech A.; Hoffman, Yehuda; Jones, Bernard J.T.; Kitaura, Francisco; Knebe, Alexander; Manti, Serena; Neyrinck, Mark; Nuza, Sebastián E.; Padilla, Nelson; Platen, Erwin; Ramachandra, Nesar; Robotham, Aaron; Saar, Enn; Shandarin, Sergei; Steinmetz, Matthias; Stoica, Radu S.; Sousbie, Thierry; Yepes, Gustavo

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Authors

Noam I. Libeskind

Rien van de Weygaert

Marius Cautun

Bridget Falck

Elmo Tempel

Tom Abel

Mehmet Alpaslan

Miguel A. Aragón-Calvo

Jaime E. Forero-Romero

Roberto Gonzalez

Stefan Gottlöber

Oliver Hahn

Wojciech A. Hellwing

Yehuda Hoffman

Bernard J.T. Jones

Francisco Kitaura

Alexander Knebe

Serena Manti

Mark Neyrinck

Sebastián E. Nuza

Nelson Padilla

Erwin Platen

Nesar Ramachandra

Aaron Robotham

Enn Saar

Sergei Shandarin

Matthias Steinmetz

Radu S. Stoica

Thierry Sousbie

Gustavo Yepes



Abstract

The cosmic web is one of the most striking features of the distribution of galaxies and dark matter on the largest scales in the Universe. It is composed of dense regions packed full of galaxies, long filamentary bridges, flattened sheets and vast low-density voids. The study of the cosmic web has focused primarily on the identification of such features, and on understanding the environmental effects on galaxy formation and halo assembly. As such, a variety of different methods have been devised to classify the cosmic web – depending on the data at hand, be it numerical simulations, large sky surveys or other. In this paper, we bring 12 of these methods together and apply them to the same data set in order to understand how they compare. In general, these cosmic-web classifiers have been designed with different cosmological goals in mind, and to study different questions. Therefore, one would not a priori expect agreement between different techniques; however, many of these methods do converge on the identification of specific features. In this paper, we study the agreements and disparities of the different methods. For example, each method finds that knots inhabit higher density regions than filaments, etc. and that voids have the lowest densities. For a given web environment, we find a substantial overlap in the density range assigned by each web classification scheme. We also compare classifications on a halo-by-halo basis; for example, we find that 9 of 12 methods classify around a third of group-mass haloes (i.e. Mhalo ∼ 1013.5 h−1 M⊙) as being in filaments. Lastly, so that any future cosmic-web classification scheme can be compared to the 12 methods used here, we have made all the data used in this paper public.

Citation

Libeskind, N. I., van de Weygaert, R., Cautun, M., Falck, B., Tempel, E., Abel, T., …Yepes, G. (2017). Tracing the cosmic web. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 473(1), 1195-1217. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx1976

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 31, 2017
Online Publication Date Aug 3, 2017
Publication Date Aug 3, 2017
Deposit Date Jan 2, 2018
Publicly Available Date Jan 3, 2018
Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Print ISSN 0035-8711
Electronic ISSN 1365-2966
Publisher Royal Astronomical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 473
Issue 1
Pages 1195-1217
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx1976
Related Public URLs https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.03021

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Copyright Statement
This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2017. The Authors.
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.





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