Galaxy evolution in the cosmic web: the relative impact of nodes and filaments in the EAGLE simulation

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Autori principali: Sarkar, Suman, Pandey, Biswajit, Das, Apashanka
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Sarkar, Suman
Pandey, Biswajit
Das, Apashanka
author_facet Sarkar, Suman
Pandey, Biswajit
Das, Apashanka
contents Galaxies evolve within the intricate geometry of the cosmic web, yet the distinct roles of its primary components - nodes and filaments remain incompletely understood. Using the EAGLE cosmological hydrodynamical simulation, we investigate how distances to filament spines and cluster-scale nodes jointly and independently influence galaxy evolution. Galaxies are classified into red, green, and blue populations through a fully data-driven entropic thresholding technique, and the nodes and filaments are identified using DisPerSE. We find that red galaxies preferentially reside near filament cores and nodes, whereas blue galaxies dominate the outskirts. This spatial segregation reveals two characteristic transition scales: a node-related crossover at $\sim 2.5~\mathrm{Mpc}$ and a filament-related crossover at $\sim 0.75~\mathrm{Mpc}$. To further quantify environmental influence, we adopt an information-theoretic approach and measure the normalised mutual information between dominant mass component and galaxy colour across the $d_{\mathrm{f}}$-$d_{\mathrm{n}}$ plane. The mass-colour coupling increases with distance from nodes at fixed filament proximity, indicating a weakening of this relation in cluster-scale environments and a stronger coupling within filamentary regions. This behaviour is strongly mass dependent, with low-mass galaxies exhibiting a more pronounced environmental modulation than high-mass systems. These results support a scale-dependent view of galaxy evolution across the cosmic web, highlighting the distinct and complementary influence of nodes and filaments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_20733
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Galaxy evolution in the cosmic web: the relative impact of nodes and filaments in the EAGLE simulation
Sarkar, Suman
Pandey, Biswajit
Das, Apashanka
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Galaxies evolve within the intricate geometry of the cosmic web, yet the distinct roles of its primary components - nodes and filaments remain incompletely understood. Using the EAGLE cosmological hydrodynamical simulation, we investigate how distances to filament spines and cluster-scale nodes jointly and independently influence galaxy evolution. Galaxies are classified into red, green, and blue populations through a fully data-driven entropic thresholding technique, and the nodes and filaments are identified using DisPerSE. We find that red galaxies preferentially reside near filament cores and nodes, whereas blue galaxies dominate the outskirts. This spatial segregation reveals two characteristic transition scales: a node-related crossover at $\sim 2.5~\mathrm{Mpc}$ and a filament-related crossover at $\sim 0.75~\mathrm{Mpc}$. To further quantify environmental influence, we adopt an information-theoretic approach and measure the normalised mutual information between dominant mass component and galaxy colour across the $d_{\mathrm{f}}$-$d_{\mathrm{n}}$ plane. The mass-colour coupling increases with distance from nodes at fixed filament proximity, indicating a weakening of this relation in cluster-scale environments and a stronger coupling within filamentary regions. This behaviour is strongly mass dependent, with low-mass galaxies exhibiting a more pronounced environmental modulation than high-mass systems. These results support a scale-dependent view of galaxy evolution across the cosmic web, highlighting the distinct and complementary influence of nodes and filaments.
title Galaxy evolution in the cosmic web: the relative impact of nodes and filaments in the EAGLE simulation
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20733