The effect of cosmic web filaments on galaxy evolution

TL;DR

This study examines how cosmic web filaments influence galaxy evolution, revealing that filament environments lead to less star formation and more early-type galaxies, primarily driven by local galaxy density effects.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the environmental impact of filaments on galaxy properties can be fully explained by local galaxy density, clarifying the role of large-scale structures.

Findings

Galaxies in filaments are less star-forming than in the field.

Differences between filament and field galaxies are due to local density.

Cluster interiors show additional environmental effects.

Abstract

Galaxy properties are known to be affected by their environment. This is well established for the extremes of the density scales, between the high-density cluster environment and the low-density field. It is however not fully understood how the intermediate-density regime of cosmic web filaments affects galaxy evolution. We investigate this environmental effect using a mass complete sample of 23,441 galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR8 Main Galaxy Sample (${M}_{\text{Stellar}} > 10^{9.91} \text{M}_{\odot}$). We define 6 environments, probing different density regimes and representing unique stages in the structure formation process, comparing the differences in star formation activity and morphology between them. We find that galaxies in filaments tend to be less star forming and favour more early-type morphologies than those in the field. These differences persist when considering stellar mass-matched samples, suggesting that this is a consequence of the environment. We further investigate whether these trends are a result of the large scale or local environment through constructing samples matched both in stellar mass and local galaxy density. We find that when also matching in local galaxy density, the differences observed between the filament and field population vanishes, concluding that the environmental effect of filaments can be entirely parameterised by a local galaxy density index. We find that differences can still be seen in comparisons with the interiors of clusters, suggesting these are unique environments which can impart additional physical processes not characterised by local galaxy density.