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Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): the large-scale structure of galaxies and comparison to mock universes

2013; Oxford University Press; Volume: 438; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/mnras/stt2136

1365-2966

Mehmet Alpaslan, A. S. G. Robotham, Simon P. Driver, P. Norberg, I. K. Baldry, A. Bauer, Joss Bland‐Hawthorn, M. J. I. Brown, M. E. Cluver, Matthew Colless, Caroline Foster, Andrew Hopkins, E. van Kampen, L. S. Kelvin, M. A. Lara-López, J. Liske, Á. R. López-Sánchez, J. Loveday, T. McNaught-Roberts, A. Merson, Kevin A. Pimbblet,

Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies

From a volume-limited sample of 45 542 galaxies and 6000 groups with z ≤ 0.213, we use an adapted minimal spanning tree algorithm to identify and classify large-scale structures within the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. Using galaxy groups, we identify 643 filaments across the three equatorial GAMA fields that span up to 200 h−1 Mpc in length, each with an average of eight groups within them. By analysing galaxies not belonging to groups, we identify a secondary population of smaller coherent structures composed entirely of galaxies, dubbed 'tendrils' that appear to link filaments together, or penetrate into voids, generally measuring around 10 h−1 Mpc in length and containing on average six galaxies. Finally, we are also able to identify a population of isolated void galaxies. By running this algorithm on GAMA mock galaxy catalogues, we compare the characteristics of large-scale structure between observed and mock data, finding that mock filaments reproduce observed ones extremely well. This provides a probe of higher order distribution statistics not captured by the popularly used two-point correlation function.