# Photometric redshift galaxies as tracers of the filamentary network

## TL;DR

This study demonstrates that photometric redshift galaxies are strongly associated with filamentary structures in the cosmic web, providing a new method to trace these filaments and estimate their properties.

## Contribution

The paper introduces a novel approach using the bivariate J-function and a quotient D to quantify the association between photometric galaxies and filamentary spines, offering a new way to map cosmic filaments.

## Key findings

- Photometric galaxies are significantly clustered with filamentary spines.
- Smaller distances between galaxies and filaments are more probable at higher redshifts.
- Estimated filamentary spine width is approximately 1 Mpc.

## Abstract

Galaxy filaments are the dominant feature in the overall structure of the cosmic web. The study of the filamentary web is an important aspect in understanding galaxy evolution and the evolution of matter in the Universe. A map of the filamentary structure is an adequate probe of the web. We propose that photometric redshift galaxies are significantly positively associated with the filamentary structure detected from the spatial distribution of spectroscopic redshift galaxies. The catalogues of spectroscopic and photometric galaxies are seen as point-process realisations in a sphere, and the catalogue of filamentary spines is proposed to be a realisation of a random set in a sphere. The positive association between these sets was studied using a bivariate $J-$function, which is a summary statistics studying clustering. A quotient $D$ was built to estimate the distance distribution of the filamentary spine to galaxies in comparison to the distance distribution of the filamentary spine to random points in $3-$dimensional Euclidean space. This measure gives a physical distance scale to the distances between filamentary spines and the studied sets of galaxies. The bivariate $J-$function shows a statistically significant clustering effect in between filamentary spines and photometric redshift galaxies. The quotient $D$ confirms the previous result that smaller distances exist with higher probability between the photometric galaxies and filaments. The trend of smaller distances between the objects grows stronger at higher redshift. Additionally, the quotient $D$ for photometric galaxies gives a rough estimate for the filamentary spine width of about $1$~Mpc. Photometric redshift galaxies are positively associated with filamentary spines detected from the spatial distribution of spectroscopic galaxies.