Detecting multi-scale filaments in galaxy distribution

Abstract

AbstractThe main feature of the spatial large-scale galaxy distribution is its intricate network of galaxy filaments. This network is spanned by the galaxy locations that can be interpreted as a three-dimensional point distribution. The global properties of the point process can be measured by different statistical methods, which, however, do not describe directly the structure elements. The morphology of the large-scale structure, on the other hand, is an important property of the galaxy distribution. Here, we apply an object point process with interactions (the Bisous model) to trace and extract the filamentary network in the presently largest galaxy redshift survey, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS data release 10). We search for multi-scale filaments in the galaxy distribution that have a radius of about 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, and 4.0h−1Mpc. We extract the spines of the filamentary network and divide the detected network into single filaments.