TY - JOUR
T1 - Detecting effects of filaments on galaxy properties in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III
AU - Chen, Yen Chi
AU - Ho, Shirley
AU - Mandelbaum, Rachel
AU - Bahcall, Neta A.
AU - Brownstein, Joel R.
AU - Freeman, Peter E.
AU - Genovese, Christopher R.
AU - Schneider, Donald P.
AU - Wasserman, Larry
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy Office of Science. The SDSS-III website is http://www.sdss3.org/.
Funding Information:
We thank Hung-Jin Huang, Florent Leclercq, Peter Melchior, Dmitri Novikov and Hy Trac for useful comments and discussions; we also thank Sukhdeep Singh for providing the de Vaucouleurs sizes for the LOWZ sample. This work is supported in part by the Department of Energy under grant DESC0011114; SH is supported in part by DOE-ASC, NASA and NSF; RM is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; CG is supported in part by DOE and NSF; LW is supported by NSF grant DMS1513412.
Funding Information:
We thank Hung-Jin Huang, Florent Leclercq, Peter Melchior, Dmitri Novikov and Hy Trac for useful comments and discussions; we also thank Sukhdeep Singh for providing the de Vaucouleurs sizes for the LOWZ sample. This work is supported in part by the Department of Energy under grant DESC0011114; SH is supported in part by DOE-ASC, NASA and NSF; RM is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; CG is supported in part by DOE and NSF; LW is supported by NSF grant DMS1513412. Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy Office of Science. The SDSS-III website is http://www.sdss3.org/. SDSS-III is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions of the SDSS-III Collaboration including the University of Arizona, the Brazilian Participation Group, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Florida, the French Participation Group, the German Participation Group, Harvard University, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, the Michigan State/Notre Dame/JINA Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, New Mexico State University, New York University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the Spanish Participation Group, University of Tokyo, University of Utah, Vanderbilt University, University of Virginia, University of Washington and Yale University.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society
PY - 2017/4/1
Y1 - 2017/4/1
N2 - We study the effects of filaments on galaxy properties in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 12 using filaments from the 'Cosmic Web Reconstruction' catalogue, a publicly available filament catalogue for SDSS. Since filaments are tracers of medium- to high-density regions, we expect that galaxy properties associated with the environment are dependent on the distance to the nearest filament. Our analysis demonstrates that a red galaxy or a high-mass galaxy tends to reside closer to filaments than a blue or low-mass galaxy. After adjusting the effect from stellar mass, on average, early-forming galaxies or large galaxies have a shorter distance to filaments than late-forming galaxies or small galaxies. For the main galaxy sample, all signals are very significant (>6σ). For the LOWZ and CMASS sample, the stellar mass and size are significant (>2σ). The filament effects we observe persist until z = 0.7 (the edge of the CMASS sample). Comparing our results to those using the galaxy distances from redMaPPer galaxy clusters as a reference, we find a similar result between filaments and clusters. Moreover, we find that the effect of clusters on the stellar mass of nearby galaxies depends on the galaxy's filamentary environment. Our findings illustrate the strong correlation of galaxy properties with proximity to density ridges, strongly supporting the claim that density ridges are good tracers of filaments.
AB - We study the effects of filaments on galaxy properties in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 12 using filaments from the 'Cosmic Web Reconstruction' catalogue, a publicly available filament catalogue for SDSS. Since filaments are tracers of medium- to high-density regions, we expect that galaxy properties associated with the environment are dependent on the distance to the nearest filament. Our analysis demonstrates that a red galaxy or a high-mass galaxy tends to reside closer to filaments than a blue or low-mass galaxy. After adjusting the effect from stellar mass, on average, early-forming galaxies or large galaxies have a shorter distance to filaments than late-forming galaxies or small galaxies. For the main galaxy sample, all signals are very significant (>6σ). For the LOWZ and CMASS sample, the stellar mass and size are significant (>2σ). The filament effects we observe persist until z = 0.7 (the edge of the CMASS sample). Comparing our results to those using the galaxy distances from redMaPPer galaxy clusters as a reference, we find a similar result between filaments and clusters. Moreover, we find that the effect of clusters on the stellar mass of nearby galaxies depends on the galaxy's filamentary environment. Our findings illustrate the strong correlation of galaxy properties with proximity to density ridges, strongly supporting the claim that density ridges are good tracers of filaments.
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U2 - 10.1093/mnras/stw3127
DO - 10.1093/mnras/stw3127
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85085918252
SN - 0035-8711
VL - 466
SP - 1880
EP - 1893
JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
IS - 2
ER -