Discovery of a massive supercluster system at $z \sim 0.47$

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of the BOSS Great Wall, a massive supercluster system at redshift ~0.47, identified using SDSS BOSS survey data, and highlights its large size and mass as one of the most extensive structures known.

Contribution

The paper introduces the discovery and characterization of the BOSS Great Wall, a new supercluster system at z~0.47, using a novel luminosity-density field analysis.

Findings

Contains 830 galaxies at mean redshift 0.47

Total estimated mass is approximately 2×10^17 h^{-1} M_sun

Features two walls and two major superclusters with diameters over 150 h^{-1} Mpc

Abstract

Superclusters are the largest relatively isolated systems in the cosmic web. Using the SDSS BOSS survey we search for the largest superclusters in the redshift range $0.43<z<0.71$. We generate a luminosity-density field smoothed over $8 h^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc}$ to detect the large-scale over-density regions. Each individual over-density region is defined as single supercluster in the survey. We define the superclusters in the way that they are comparable with the superclusters found in the SDSS main survey. We found a system we call the BOSS Great Wall (BGW), which consists of two walls with diameters 186 and 173 $h^{-1}$Mpc, and two other major superclusters with diameters of 64 and 91 $h^{-1}$Mpc. As a whole, this system consists of 830 galaxies with the mean redshift 0.47. We estimate the total mass to be approximately $2\times10^{17}h^{-1}M_\odot$. The morphology of the superclusters in the BGW system is similar to the morphology of the superclusters in the Sloan Great Wall region. The BGW is one of the most extended and massive system of superclusters yet found in the Universe.