The shape distribution of superclusters in SDSS DR 12

Abstract

Galaxy superclusters, the largest galaxy structures in the cosmic web, are formed due to the gravitational collapse (although they are not usually gravitationally bound). Their geometrical properties can shed light on the structure formation process on cosmological scales, hence on the fundamental properties of gravity itself. In this work we study the distributions of the shape, topology and morphology of the superclusters extracted from SDSS DR 12 main galaxy sample and defined in two different ways - using fixed and adaptive density threshold in the luminosity-density field. To assess the geometry and topology of each individual supercluster, we employ Minkowski functionals and Shapefinders, precisely calculated by the shape diagnostic tool SURFGEN2. Both supercluster samples produce similar shape distributions. Not surprisingly, most superclusters are spherical in shape with trivial topology. However, large superclusters with volumes $V\gtrsim 10^4$ Mpc${}^3$ are statistically found to be filamentary with non-zero genus values. The results, shape distributions and catalogues have been made publicly available.

22 pages, 22 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

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