Which filaments matter: the relative scalings of anisotropic infall

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Main Authors: Shim, Junsup, Pogosyan, Dmitri, Jeon, Myoungwon, Pichon, Christophe
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Shim, Junsup
Pogosyan, Dmitri
Jeon, Myoungwon
Pichon, Christophe
author_facet Shim, Junsup
Pogosyan, Dmitri
Jeon, Myoungwon
Pichon, Christophe
contents Dark-matter haloes do not form in isolation but within the surrounding cosmic web. By the time a halo begins to collapse, its larger-scale environment has typically collapsed along two axes, forming filaments that channel anisotropic infall toward the halo. In this work, we derive from first principles the characteristic Lagrangian scale ratio at which such an anisotropic tidal field most strongly influences halo formation. Specifically, we identify the inflection point of the conditional probability that the tidal field, smoothed on a scale Rsd, undergoes two-dimensional compression, given the presence of a density peak of rarity nu on a smaller scale Rpk. For a standard LambdaCDM cosmology, we find (Rsd/Rpk)infl = 2.2 + (nu-2.5) for Rpk corresponding to a tophat filter of 8Mpc/h. This result implies that the anisotropic tidal influence on a collapsing halo typically extends to 2-3 times the size of its Lagrangian patch. Recast as a function of formation redshift z, the characteristic filament scale around 2.5 sigma peaks can be approximated by Rsd(z) = 31 /(2+(1+z)**2)Mpc/h. We provide practical scaling laws for selecting dynamically relevant smoothing scales in large-scale surveys and for setting initial patch sizes in high-resolution zoom simulations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_03093
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Which filaments matter: the relative scalings of anisotropic infall
Shim, Junsup
Pogosyan, Dmitri
Jeon, Myoungwon
Pichon, Christophe
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Dark-matter haloes do not form in isolation but within the surrounding cosmic web. By the time a halo begins to collapse, its larger-scale environment has typically collapsed along two axes, forming filaments that channel anisotropic infall toward the halo. In this work, we derive from first principles the characteristic Lagrangian scale ratio at which such an anisotropic tidal field most strongly influences halo formation. Specifically, we identify the inflection point of the conditional probability that the tidal field, smoothed on a scale Rsd, undergoes two-dimensional compression, given the presence of a density peak of rarity nu on a smaller scale Rpk. For a standard LambdaCDM cosmology, we find (Rsd/Rpk)infl = 2.2 + (nu-2.5) for Rpk corresponding to a tophat filter of 8Mpc/h. This result implies that the anisotropic tidal influence on a collapsing halo typically extends to 2-3 times the size of its Lagrangian patch. Recast as a function of formation redshift z, the characteristic filament scale around 2.5 sigma peaks can be approximated by Rsd(z) = 31 /(2+(1+z)**2)Mpc/h. We provide practical scaling laws for selecting dynamically relevant smoothing scales in large-scale surveys and for setting initial patch sizes in high-resolution zoom simulations.
title Which filaments matter: the relative scalings of anisotropic infall
topic Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.03093