Zeldovich pancakes in observational data are cold

TL;DR

This paper refines a method to observe Zeldovich pancakes, revealing they are cold, low-velocity dispersion structures with low stellar mass, aiding understanding of cosmic web components.

Contribution

The study improves observational detection of Zeldovich pancakes and compares their properties with numerical simulations, confirming their cold, two-dimensional nature.

Findings

Observed pancakes have velocity dispersion ~100 km/sec.

Structures are confirmed as two-dimensional.

Stellar to total mass ratio is approximately 2×10⁻⁴.

Abstract

The present day universe consists of galaxies, galaxy clusters, one-dimensional filaments and two-dimensional sheets or pancakes, all of which combine to form the cosmic web. The so called "Zeldovich pancakes", are very difficult to observe, because their overdensity is only slightly greater than the average density of the universe. Falco et al (2014) presented a method to identify Zeldovich pancakes in observational data, and these were used as a tool for estimating the mass of galaxy clusters. Here we expand and refine that observational detection method. We study two pancakes on scales of 10 Mpc, identified from spectroscopically observed galaxies near the Coma cluster, and compare with twenty numerical pancakes. We find that the observed structures have velocity dispersion about 100 km/sec, which is relatively low compared to typical groups and filaments. These velocity dispersions are consistent with those found for the numerical pancakes. We also confirm that the identified structures are in fact two-dimensional structures. Finally, we estimate the stellar to total mass of the observational pancakes to be $2 \times 10^{-4}$, within one order of magnitude, which is smaller than that of clusters of galaxies.