Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): the galaxy luminosity function within the cosmic web

Eardley, E.; Peacock, J.A.; McNaught-Roberts, T.; Heymans, C.; Norberg, P.; Alpaslan, M.; Baldry, I.; Bland-Hawthorn, J.; Brough, S.; Cluver, M.E.; Driver, S.P.; Farrow, D.J.; Liske, J.; Loveday, J.; Robotham, A.S.G.

Abstract

We investigate the dependence of the galaxy luminosity function on geometric environment within the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. The tidal tensor prescription, based on the Hessian of the pseudo-gravitational potential, is used to classify the cosmic web and define the geometric environments: for a given smoothing scale, we classify every position of the surveyed region, 0.04 < z < 0.26, as either a void, a sheet, a filament or a knot. We consider how to choose appropriate thresholds in the eigenvalues of the Hessian in order to partition the galaxies approximately evenly between environments. We find a significant variation in the luminosity function of galaxies between different geometric environments; the normalization, characterized by ϕ* in a Schechter function fit, increases by an order of magnitude from voids to knots. The turnover magnitude, characterized by M*, brightens by approximately 0.5 mag from voids to knots. However, we show that the observed modulation can be entirely attributed to the indirect local-density dependence. We therefore find no evidence of a direct influence of the cosmic web on the galaxy luminosity function.

Citation

Eardley, E., Peacock, J., McNaught-Roberts, T., Heymans, C., Norberg, P., Alpaslan, M., …Robotham, A. (2015). Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): the galaxy luminosity function within the cosmic web. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 448(4), 3665-3678. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv237

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 3, 2015
• Publication Date: Apr 21, 2015
• Deposit Date: Feb 3, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 11, 2016
• Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Print ISSN: 0035-8711
• Electronic ISSN: 1365-2966
• Publisher: Royal Astronomical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 448
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 3665-3678
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv237
• Keywords: Surveys, Galaxies: luminosity function, mass function, Cosmology: observations, Large-scale structure of Universe.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1413412