Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology

Abstract:

The variation of galaxy stellar masses and colour types with the distance to projected cosmic filaments are quantified using the precise photometric redshifts of the COSMOS2015 catalogue extracted from Cosmological Evolution Survey (COSMOS) field (2 deg2). Realistic mock catalogues are also extracted from the lightcone of the cosmological hydrodynamical simulation Horizon-AGN. They show that the photometric redshift accuracy of the observed catalogue (σz < 0.015 at M* > 1010M⊙ and z < 0.9) is sufficient to provide two-dimensional (2D) filaments that closely match their projected three-dimensional (3D) counterparts. Transverse stellar mass gradients are measured in projected slices of thickness 75 Mpc between 0.5 < z < 0.9, showing that the most massive galaxies are statistically closer to their neighbouring filament. At fixed stellar mass, passive galaxies are also found closer to their filament, while active star-forming galaxies statistically lie further away. The contributions of nodes and local density are removed from these gradients to highlight the specific role played by the geometry of the filaments. We find that the measured signal does persist after this removal, clearly demonstrating that proximity to a filament is not equivalent to proximity to an overdensity. These findings are in agreement with gradients measured in both 2D and 3D in the Horizon-AGN simulation and those observed in the spectroscopic surveys VIPERS and GAMA (which both rely on the identification of 3D filaments). They are consistent with a picture in which the influence of the geometry of the large-scale environment drives anisotropic tides that impact the assembly history of galaxies, and hence their observed properties.

Abstract:

Tests of gravity at the galaxy scale are in their infancy. As a first step to systematically uncovering the gravitational significance of galaxies, we map three fundamental gravitational variables – the Newtonian potential, acceleration and curvature – over the galaxy environments of the local universe to a distance of approximately 200 Mpc. Our method combines the contributions from galaxies in an all-sky redshift survey, halos from an N-body simulation hosting low-luminosity objects, and linear and quasi-linear modes of the density field. We use the ranges of these variables to determine the extent to which galaxies expand the scope of generic tests of gravity and are capable of constraining specific classes of model for which they have special significance. Finally, we investigate the improvements afforded by upcoming galaxy surveys.