LAM seminar by Clotilde Laigle – Galaxy evolution in the Cosmic Web

Full title: Galaxy evolution in the Cosmic Web: status, open questions and challenges in the Era of Large Surveys

Abstract:

In our model of galaxy formation, galaxy properties are, on average, tightly linked to their host dark matter halos; yet, the stellar-to-halo mass ratio exhibits significant scatter, indicating that halo mass is not the sole indicator of galaxy growth. In fact, matter at large scales is distributed in a web-like structure, and a large fraction of the mass in the Universe at high redshift resides outside virialized halos, within this filamentary network that provides the material for halos and galaxies to grow.
One of the major outstanding questions in galaxy formation is, therefore, how the large-scale cosmic web environment influences the formation and evolution of galaxies beyond halo mass. I will give an overview of the status of the current research to address this question.
Observationally, a key difficulty before being able to tackle this question is to map the filaments of the cosmic
web with sufficient positional accuracy. Cutting-edge instrumentation such as the Euclid satellite and the Rubin Observatory are starting surveys that will contain in the next few years billions of galaxies with great quality, spanning half of the history of the Universe. How will they help to better understand the co-evolution of galaxies and the cosmic web?