Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2025

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Program

Astrophysics

Advisor

Charlotte Welker

Committee Members

Jillian Bellovary

Subject Categories

Astrophysics and Astronomy

Keywords

Filaments, Galaxies

Abstract

The cosmic web is the large-scale structure of the universe, composed of elongated, overdense areas held together by gravity known as cosmic filaments. Within these filaments, dwarf galaxies are ubiquitous and make for excellent laboratories due to their small size. to determine the effects of cosmic web structures on dwarf galaxies. In this thesis, I laid the groundwork to investigate whether dwarf galaxy populations vary across different types of filaments. Filaments were extracted from the gas density field in the New Horizon simulation at $z=0$ using the topological feature finder DisPerSE. I determined the distances of galaxies to their nearest filament to investigate how galaxy properties are affected by their greater environment. I find that the most massive galaxies are closer to their nearest filament, and by extension, the smallest galaxies are further from the nearest filament. I compared the galaxies' stellar mass to their properties and found that the galaxies scale accordingly. We take the log average density, metallicity, and temperature profiles of the first filament in the sample. We find that the filament is dense, hot, and metal-poor. We studied the density, metallicity, and temperature around filaments in New Horizon to identify characteristic features that could help start a hydrodynamic and thermodynamic classification of filaments of intermediate density.

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