No Arabic abstract
We explore the characteristics of the cosmic web around Local Group(LG) like pairs using a cosmological simulation in the $Lambda$CDM cosmology. We use the Hessian of the gravitational potential to classify regions on scales of $sim 2$ Mpc as a peak, sheet, filament or void. The sample of LG counterparts is represented by two samples of halo pairs. The first is a general sample composed by pairs with similar masses and isolation criteria as observed for the LG. The second is a subset with additional observed kinematic constraints such as relative pair velocity and separation. We find that the pairs in the LG sample with all constraints are: (i) Preferentially located in filaments and sheets, (ii) Located in in a narrow range of local overdensity $0<delta<2$, web ellipticity $0.1<e<1.0$ and prolateness $-0.4<p<0.4$. (iii) Strongly aligned with the cosmic web. The alignments are such that the pair orbital angular momentum tends to be perpendicular to the smallest tidal eigenvector, $hat{e}_3$, which lies along the filament direction or the sheet plane. A stronger alignment is present for the vector linking the two halos with the vector $hat{e}_3$. Additionally, we fail to find a strong correlation of the spin of each halo in the pair with the cosmic web. All these trends are expected to a great extent from the selection on the LG total mass on the general sample. Applied to the observed LG, there is a potential conflict between the alignments of the different planes of satellites and the numerical evidence for satellite accretion along filaments; the direction defined by $hat{e}_3$. This highlights the relevance of achieving a precise characterization of the place of the LG in the cosmic web in the cosmological context provided by $Lambda$CDM.
We use the Bolshoi Simulation to find the most probable location of the Local Group (LG) in the cosmic web. Our LG simulacra are pairs of halos with isolation and kinematic properties consistent with observations. The cosmic web is defined using a tidal tensor approach. We find that the LGs preferred location is regions with a dark matter overdensity close to the cosmic average. This makes filaments and sheets the preferred environment. We also find a strong alignment between the LG and the cosmic web. The orbital angular momentum is preferentially perpendicular to the smallest tidal eigenvector, while the vector connecting the two halos is strongly aligned along the smallest tidal eigenvector and perpendicular to the largest tidal eigenvector; the pair lies and moves along filaments and sheets. We do not find any evidence for an alignment between the spin of each halo in the pair and the cosmic web.
The 80% of the matter in the Universe is in the form of dark matter that comprises the skeleton of the large-scale structure called the Cosmic Web. As the Cosmic Web dictates the motion of all matter in galaxies and inter-galactic media through gravity, knowing the distribution of dark matter is essential for studying the large-scale structure. However, the Cosmic Webs detailed structure is unknown because it is dominated by dark matter and warm-hot inter-galactic media, both of which are hard to trace. Here we show that we can reconstruct the Cosmic Web from the galaxy distribution using the convolutional-neural-network-based deep-learning algorithm. We find the mapping between the position and velocity of galaxies and the Cosmic Web using the results of the state-of-the-art cosmological galaxy simulations, Illustris-TNG. We confirm the mapping by applying it to the EAGLE simulation. Finally, using the local galaxy sample from Cosmicflows-3, we find the dark-matter map in the local Universe. We anticipate that the local dark-matter map will illuminate the studies of the nature of dark matter and the formation and evolution of the Local Group. High-resolution simulations and precise distance measurements to local galaxies will improve the accuracy of the dark-matter map.
We explore the evolution of halo spins in the cosmic web using a very large sample of dark matter haloes in the $Lambda$CDM Planck-Millennium N-body simulation. We use the NEXUS+ multiscale formalism to identify the hierarchy of filaments and sheets of the cosmic web at several redshifts. We find that at all times the magnitude of halo spins correlates with the web environment, being largest in filaments, and, for the first time, we show that it also correlates with filament thickness as well as the angle between spin-orientation and the spine of the host filament. For example, massive haloes in thick filaments spin faster than their counterparts in thin filaments, while for low-mass haloes the reverse is true. We also have studied the evolution of alignment between halo spin orientations and the preferential axes of filaments and sheets. The alignment varies with halo mass, with the spins of low-mass haloes being predominantly along the filament spine, while those of high-mass haloes being predominantly perpendicular to the filament spine. On average, for all halo masses, halo spins become more perpendicular to the filament spine at later times. At all redshifts, the spin alignment shows a considerable variation with filament thickness, with the halo mass corresponding to the transition from parallel to perpendicular alignment varying by more than one order of magnitude. The environmental dependence of halo spin magnitude shows little evolution for $zleq2$ and is likely a consequence of the correlations in the initial conditions or high redshift effects
Increasing evidence suggests that cosmological sheets, filaments, and voids may be substantially magnetized today. The origin of magnetic fields in the intergalactic medium (IGM) is, however, currently uncertain. It seems well known that non-standard extensions to the physics of the standard model can provide mechanisms susceptible of magnetizing the universe at large. Perhaps less well known is the fact that standard, classical physics of matter--radiation interactions actually possesses the same potential. We discuss a magnetogenesis mechanism based on the exchange of momentum between hard photons and electrons in an inhomogeneous IGM. Operating in the neighborhood of ionizing sources during the epoch of reionization, this mechanism is capable of generating magnetic seeds of relevant strengths over scales comparable to the distance between ionizing sources. In addition, summing up the contributions of all ionizing sources and taking into account the distribution of gas inhomogeneities, we show that this mechanism leaves the IGM, at the end of reionization, with a level of magnetization that might account, when amplification mechanisms take over, for the magnetic fields strengths in the current cosmic web.
The growth of large-scale cosmic structure is a beautiful exemplification of how complexity can emerge in our Universe, starting from simple initial conditions and simple physical laws. Using {enzo} cosmological numerical simulations, I applied tools from Information Theory (namely, statistical complexity) to quantify the amount of complexity in the simulated cosmic volume, as a function of cosmic epoch and environment. This analysis can quantify how much difficult to predict, at least in a statistical sense, is the evolution of the thermal, kinetic and magnetic energy of the dominant component of ordinary matter in the Universe (the intragalactic medium plasma). The most complex environment in the simulated cosmic web is generally found to be the periphery of large-scale structures (e.g. galaxy clusters and filaments), where the complexity is on average $sim 10-10^2$ times larger than in more rarefied regions, even if the latter dominate the volume-integrated complexity of the simulated Universe. If the energy evolution of gas in the cosmic web is measured on a $approx 100 $ $rm kpc/h$ resolution and over a $approx 200$ $rm Myr$ timescale, its total complexity is the range of $sim 10^{16}-10^{17} rm ~bits$, with little dependence on the assumed gas physics, cosmology or cosmic variance.