Speaker: Ulrike Kuchner (University of Nottingham)

Date: Thursday 27 April 2023

Time: 14:00

Location: NSQI Seminar Room

Navigating the Cosmic Web with this generation’s galaxy surveys

Large scale galaxy environments provide the framework for the formation and evolution of galaxies. The ability to form stars, as well as galaxy morphology and shape are partly driven by the environment, which is best qualified by the properties of the cosmic web. It has therefore become of key importance to understand the properties, dynamics, and interconnections of the components of the web, i.e. the filaments, walls, clusters, and voids. Only then can we fully understand how the environment couples down to galactic scales.

Identifying the anisotropic cosmic web is challenging due to the complexity of the individual structures, as well as its connectivity, its lack of structural symmetries, intrinsic multiscale nature and the wide range of densities involved. We have made significant progress in examining the connection between cosmic web filaments and nodes (galaxy clusters) using hydro-dynamical simulations that have provided an intriguing view of the complex flow of dark matter, gas, and galaxies through filaments and on to clusters. Our work helps us to prepare for this generation of galaxy surveys that will link the expansive views e.g., from the Euclid Wide Survey to the relatively narrow views e.g., from wide-field clusters surveys with WEAVE and 4MOST that will yield galaxy spectra of many thousands of galaxies in and around large numbers of galaxy clusters. Together, they provide insight into the structure and dynamics of the cosmic web and connections to pre-processing — the integrated effect of a range of processes that affects galaxies outside clusters and can start galaxy transformations and quenching well before their accretion into clusters.