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Oxford University Press (OUP), Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1(438), p. 177-194

DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stt2136

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

Journal article published in 2013 by Mehmet Alpaslan ORCID, Aaron S. G. Robotham, Simon Driver ORCID, Peder Norberg ORCID, Ivan Baldry, Amanda E. Bauer, Joss Bland-Hawthorn, Michael Brown ORCID, Michelle Cluver, Matthew Colless ORCID, Caroline Foster, Andrew Hopkins, Eelco Van Kampen, Lee Kelvin, Maritza A. Lara-Lopez ORCID and other authors.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

From a volume limited sample of 45,542 galaxies and 6,000 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 8 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 6 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. ; Comment: 20 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society