The impact of cosmic filaments on the abundance of satellite galaxies

Abstract

The impact of cosmic web environments on galaxy properties plays a critical role in understanding galaxy formation. Using the state-of-the-art cosmological simulation IllustrisTNG, we investigate how satellite galaxy abundance differs between filaments and the field, with filaments identified using the DisPerSE algorithm. When filaments are identified using galaxies as tracers, we find that, across all magnitude bins, central galaxies in filaments tend to host more satellite galaxies than their counterparts in the field, in qualitative agreement with observational results from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The average ratios between satellite luminosity functions in filaments and the field are $3.49$, $2.61$, and $1.90$ in the central galaxy $r$-band magnitude bins of $M_{r,\mathrm{cen}}\sim -22$, $-21$, and $-20$, respectively. We show that much of this excess can be attributed to the higher host halo masses of galaxies in filaments. After resampling central galaxies in both environments to match the halo mass distributions within each magnitude bin, the satellite abundance enhancement in filaments is reduced by up to $79\%$. Additionally, the choice of tracers used to identify filaments introduces a significant bias: when filaments are identified using the dark matter density field, the environmental difference in satellite abundance is reduced by more than $70\%$; after further resampling in both magnitude and halo mass, the difference is further suppressed by another $\sim 60$--$95\%$. Our results highlight the importance of halo mass differences and tracer choice biases when interpreting and understanding the impact of environment on satellite galaxy properties.

arXiv comment19 pages, 10 figures; accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (61)

• SciPy 1.0--Fundamental Algorithms for Scientific Computing in Python
• Array Programming with NumPy
• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• Planck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parameters
• The Astropy Project: Building an inclusive, open-science project and status of the v2.0 core package
• Populating a cluster of galaxies - I. Results at z=0
• E pur si muove: Galiliean-invariant cosmological hydrodynamical simulations on a moving mesh
• Simulating Galaxy Formation with the IllustrisTNG Model
• The Aquarius Project: the subhalos of galactic halos
• First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: matter and galaxy clustering
• First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: the stellar mass content of groups and clusters of galaxies
• First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: the galaxy color bimodality
• Small-Scale Challenges to the $\Lambda$CDM Paradigm
• The Environmental Dependence of the Relations between Stellar Mass, Structure, Star Formation and Nuclear Activity in Galaxies
• First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: A tale of two elements -- chemical evolution of magnesium and europium
• How Filaments are Woven into the Cosmic Web
• First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: radio haloes and magnetic fields
• Substructures in hydrodynamical cluster simulations
• Halos and galaxies in the standard cosmological model: results from the Bolshoi simulation
• Dancing in the dark: galactic properties trace spin swings along the cosmic web
• The persistent cosmic web and its filamentary structure I: Theory and implementation
• The subhalo populations of LCDM dark haloes
• Relationship between environment and the broad-band optical properties of galaxies in the SDSS
• Formation and evolution of galaxy dark matter halos and their substructure
• Properties of Dark Matter Haloes in Clusters, Filaments, Sheets and Voids
• Evolution of the cosmic web
• Dark matter and cosmic structure
• Tracing the cosmic web
• The Evolution of Dark Matter Halo Properties in Clusters, Filaments, Sheets and Voids
• Detecting filamentary pattern in the cosmic web: a catalogue of filaments for the SDSS
• The persistent cosmic web and its filamentary structure II: Illustrations
• Spin alignment of dark matter haloes in filaments and walls
• Galaxies-Intergalactic Medium Interaction Calculation --I. Galaxy formation as a function of large-scale environment
• Halo and Subhalo Demographics with Planck Cosmological Parameters: Bolshoi-Planck and MultiDark-Planck Simulations
• There's no place like home? Statistics of Milky Way-mass dark matter halos
• COSMOS2015 photometric redshifts probe the impact of filaments on galaxy properties
• Environmental Dependence of Dark Matter Halo Growth I: Halo Merger Rates
• The Fate of Substructures in Cold Dark Matter Haloes
• Galaxy orientation with the cosmic web across cosmic time
• The cosmic web and the orientation of angular momenta
• Cosmic Web of Galaxies in the COSMOS Field: Public Catalog and Different Quenching for Centrals and Satellites
• The Cosmic Ballet II: Spin alignment of galaxies and haloes with large-scale filaments in the EAGLE simulation
• The statistics of the subhalo abundance of dark matter haloes
• Statistics of Dark Matter Substructure: III. Halo-to-Halo Variance
• The spin alignment of galaxies with the large-scale tidal field in hydrodynamic simulations
• Characterising filaments in the SDSS volume from the galaxy distribution
• Virgo Filaments I: Processing of gas in cosmological filaments around the Virgo cluster
• Like a spider in its web: a study of the Large Scale Structure around the Coma cluster
• Galaxy properties and the cosmic web in simulations
• Impact of filaments on galaxy formation in their residing dark matter haloes
• A comparison of cosmological filaments catalogues
• The boundary of cosmic filaments
• Galaxy properties in the cosmic web of EAGLE simulation
• The impact of filaments on dwarf galaxy properties in the Auriga simulations
• On the width and profiles of cosmic filaments
• Galaxy and halo properties around cosmic filaments from Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 and the ELUCID simulation
• Prospects for detecting cosmic filaments in Lyman-alpha emission across redshifts $z=2-5$
• Impact of cosmic web on the properties of galaxies in IllustrisTNG simulations
• Caught in the cosmic web: environmental effects on subhalo abundance and internal density profiles
• Galaxies in the simulated cosmic web: I. Filament identification and their properties
• The causal effect of cosmic filaments on dark matter halos