Galaxies congregate in clusters and along filaments, and are missing from large regions referred to as voids. These structures are seen in maps derived from spectroscopic surveys that reveal networks of structure that are interconnected with no clear boundaries. Extended regions with a high concentration of galaxies are called `superclusters', although this term is not precise. There is, however, another way to analyse the structure. If the distance to each galaxy from Earth is directly measured, then the peculiar velocity can be derived from the subtraction of the mean cosmic expansion, the product of distance times the Hubble constant, from observed velocity. The peculiar velocity is the line-of-sight departure from the cosmic expansion and arises from gravitational perturbations; a map of peculiar velocities can be translated into a map of the distribution of matter. Here we report a map of structure made using a catalogue of peculiar velocities. We find locations where peculiar velocity flows diverge, as water does at watershed divides, and we trace the surface of divergent points that surrounds us. Within the volume enclosed by this surface, the motions of galaxies are inward after removal of the mean cosmic expansion and long range flows. We define a supercluster to be the volume within such a surface, and so we are defining the extent of our home supercluster, which we call Laniakea.
The evolution of the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe is often characterized by the density field. Here we take a complimentary approach and characterize it using the cosmic velocity field, specifically the deformation of the velocity field. The deformation tensor is decomposed into its symmetric component (known as the `shear tensor') and its antisymmetric part (the `vorticity'). Using a high-resolution cosmological simulation, we examine the relative orientations of the shear and the vorticity as a function of spatial scale and redshift. The shear is found to be remarkably stable to the choice of scale, while the vorticity is found to quickly decay with increasing spatial scale or redshift. The vorticity emerges out of the linear regime randomly oriented with respect to the shear eigenvectors. Non-linear evolution drives the vorticity to lie within the plane defined by the eigenvector of the fastest collapse. Within that plane, the vorticity first gets aligned with the middle eigenvector and then it moves to be preferentially aligned with the third eigenvector, of slowest collapse. Finally, a scale of `non-linearity' to be used when calculating the properties of the non-linear deformation tensor at different redshifts is suggested.
Brook, C. B., Cintio, A. D., Knebe, A., Gottlöber, S., Hoffman, Y., Yepes, G., Garrison-Kimmel, S., 2014, The Astrophysical Journal
, 784, 1 , L14 Published: March 2014
We contend that a single power-law halo mass distribution is appropriate for direct matching to the stellar masses of observed Local Group dwarf galaxies, allowing the determination of the slope of the stellar mass-halo mass relation for low-mass galaxies. Errors in halo masses are well defined as the Poisson noise of simulated Local Group realizations, which we determine using local volume simulations. For the stellar mass range 107 M ⊙<M * < 108 M ⊙, for which we likely have a complete census of observed galaxies, we find that the stellar mass-halo mass relation follows a power law with slope of 3.1, significantly steeper than most values in the literature. This steep relation between stellar and halo masses would indicate that Local Group dwarf galaxies are hosted by dark matter halos with a small range of mass. Our methodology is robust down to the stellar mass to which the census of observed Local Group galaxies is complete, but the significant uncertainty in the currently measured slope of the stellar-to-halo mass relation will decrease dramatically if the Local Group completeness limit was 106.5 M ⊙ or below, highlighting the importance of pushing such limit to lower masses and larger volumes.
We review how dark matter is distributed in our local neighbourhood from an observational and theoretical perspective. We will start by describing first the dark matter halo of our own galaxy and in the Local Group. Then we proceed to describe the dark matter distribution in the more extended area known as the Local Universe. Depending on the nature of dark matter, numerical simulations predict different abundances of substructures in Local Group galaxies, in the number of void regions and the abundance of low rotational velocity galaxies in the Local Universe. By comparing these predictions with the most recent observations, strong constrains on the physical properties of the dark matter particles can be derived. We devote particular attention to the results from the Constrained Local UniversE Simulations (CLUES) project, a special set of simulations whose initial conditions are constrained by observational data from the Local Universe. The resulting simulations are designed to reproduce the observed structures in the nearby universe. The CLUES provides a numerical laboratory for simulating the Local Group of galaxies and exploring the physics of galaxy formation in an environment designed to follow the observed Local Universe. It has come of age as the numerical analogue of Near-Field Cosmology.
Sorce, J. G., Courtois, H. M., Gottlöber, S., Hoffman, Y., Tully, R. B., 2014, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
, 437, 4 , 3586 Published: February 2014
Peculiar velocities, obtained from direct distance measurements, are data of choice to achieve constrained simulations of the Local Universe reliable down to a scale of a few megaparsec. Unlike redshift surveys, peculiar velocities are direct tracers of the underlying gravitational field as they trace both baryonic and dark matter. This paper presents the first attempt to use solely observational peculiar velocities to constrain cosmological simulations of the nearby Universe. In order to set up initial conditions, a Reverse Zel'dovich Approximation (RZA) is used to displace constraints from their positions at z = 0 to their precursors' locations at higher redshifts. An additional new feature replaces original observed radial peculiar velocity vectors by their full 3D reconstructions provided by the Wiener-Filter (WF) estimator. Subsequently, the constrained realization (CR) of Gaussian fields technique is applied to build various realizations of the initial conditions. The WF/RZA/CR method is first tested on realistic mock catalogues built from a reference simulation similar to the Local Universe. These mocks include errors on peculiar velocities, on data point positions and a large continuous zone devoid of data in order to mimic galactic extinction. Large-scale structures are recovered with a typical accuracy of 5 h-1 Mpc in position, the best realizations reaching a 2-3 h-1 Mpc precision, the limit imposed by the RZA linear theory. Then, the method is applied to the first observational radial peculiar velocity catalogue of the project Cosmicflows. This paper is a proof of concept that the WF/RZA/CR method can be applied to observational peculiar velocities to successfully build constrained initial conditions.
