The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS): Galaxy segregation inside filaments at $z\simeq 0.7$

Abstract

We present the first quantitative detection of large-scale filamentary structure at $z\simeq 0.7$ in the large cosmological volume probed by the VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS). We use simulations to show the capability of VIPERS to recover robust topological features in the galaxy distribution, in particular the filamentary network. We then investigate how galaxies with different stellar masses and stellar activities are distributed around the filaments and find a significant segregation, with the most massive or quiescent galaxies being closer to the filament axis than less massive or active galaxies. The signal persists even after down-weighting the contribution of peak regions. Our results suggest that massive and quiescent galaxies assemble their stellar mass through successive mergers during their migration along filaments towards the nodes of the cosmic web. On the other hand, low-mass star-forming galaxies prefer the outer edge of filaments, a vorticity rich region dominated by smooth accretion, as predicted by the recent spin alignment theory. This emphasizes the role of large scale cosmic flows in shaping galaxy properties.

7 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (7)

• Cold streams in early massive hot haloes as the main mode of galaxy formation
• Properties of Dark Matter Haloes in Clusters, Filaments, Sheets and Voids
• Spin alignment of dark matter haloes in filaments and walls
• J-PAS: The Javalambre-Physics of the Accelerated Universe Astrophysical Survey
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): The galaxy luminosity function within the cosmic web
• The fully connected N-dimensional skeleton: probing the evolution of the cosmic web
• The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey - Searching for Cosmic Voids

Cited by in corpus (2)

• From voids to filaments: environmental transformations of galaxies in the SDSS
• Measuring alignments between galaxies and the cosmic web at $z\sim 2-3$ using IGM tomography