The Spine of the Cosmic Web

TL;DR

The paper introduces the SpineWeb framework, a topological analysis method for the Cosmic Web that identifies its walls, filaments, and nodes using watershed segmentation and adjacency properties, demonstrated on models and simulations.

Contribution

The novel SpineWeb method uses watershed segmentation and boundary adjacency to accurately identify cosmic web structures in density fields.

Findings

Effective in identifying cosmic web structures in models and simulations

Demonstrates potential for studying cosmic web dynamics

Outperforms previous segmentation approaches

Abstract

We present the SpineWeb framework for the topological analysis of the Cosmic Web and the identification of its walls, filaments and cluster nodes. Based on the watershed segmentation of the cosmic density field, the SpineWeb method invokes the local adjacency properties of the boundaries between the watershed basins to trace the critical points in the density field and the separatrices defined by them. The separatrices are classified into walls and the spine, the network of filaments and nodes in the matter distribution. Testing the method with a heuristic Voronoi model yields outstanding results. Following the discussion of the test results, we apply the SpineWeb method to a set of cosmological N-body simulations. The latter illustrates the potential for studying the structure and dynamics of the Cosmic Web.