Dark Matter Halo Properties vs. Local Density and Cosmic Web Location

We study the effects of the local environmental density and the cosmic web environment (filaments, walls, and voids) on key properties of dark matter halos using the Bolshoi-Planck LCDM cosmological simulation. The z = 0 simulation is analysed into filaments, walls, and voids using the SpineWeb method and also the VIDE package of tools, both of which use the watershed transform. The key halo properties that we study are the specific mass accretion rate, spin parameter, concentration, prolateness, scale factor of the last major merger, and scale factor when the halo had half of its z = 0 mass. For all these properties, we find that there is no discernible difference between the halo properties in filaments, walls, or voids when compared at the same environmental density. As a result, we conclude that environmental density is the core attribute that affects these properties. This conclusion is in line with recent findings that properties of galaxies in redshift surveys are independent of their cosmic web environment at the same environmental density at z ~ 0. We also find that the local web environment of the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies near the centre of a cosmic wall does not appear to have any effect on the properties of these galaxies' dark matter halos except for their orientation, although we find that it is rather rare to have such massive halos near the centre of a relatively small cosmic wall.Comment: 23 page

Can intrinsic alignments of elongated low-mass galaxies be used to map the cosmic web at high redshift?

Hubble Space Telescope observations show that low-mass ($M_*=10^9-10^{10}M_{\odot}$) galaxies at high redshift ($z=1.0-2.5$) tend to be elongated (prolate) rather than disky (oblate) or spheroidal. This is explained in zoom-in cosmological hydrodynamical simulations by the fact that these galaxies are forming in cosmic web filaments where accretion happens preferentially along the direction of elongation. We ask whether the elongated morphology of these galaxies allows them to be used as effective tracers of cosmic web filaments at high redshift via their intrinsic alignments. Using mock lightcones and spectroscopically-confirmed galaxy pairs from the CANDELS survey, we test two types of alignments: (1) between the galaxy major axis and the direction to nearby galaxies of any mass, and (2) between the major axes of nearby pairs of low-mass, likely prolate, galaxies. The mock lightcones predict strong signals in 3D real space, 3D redshift space, and 2D projected redshift space for both types of alignments (assuming prolate galaxy orientations are the same as those of their host prolate halos), but we do not detect significant alignment signals in CANDELS observations. However, we show that spectroscopic redshifts have been obtained for only a small fraction of highly elongated galaxies, and accounting for spectroscopic incompleteness and redshift errors significantly degrades the 2D mock signal. This may partly explain the alignment discrepancy and highlights one of several avenues for future work.Comment: Re-submitted to MNRAS after minor revision