Abstract
Despite containing about a half of the total matter in the Universe, at most
wavelengths the filamentary structure of the cosmic web is difficult to
observe. In this work, we use large unigrid cosmological simulations to
investigate how the geometrical, thermodynamical and magnetic properties of
cosmological filaments vary with mass and redshift (z $1$). We find that
the average temperature, length, volume and magnetic field of filaments are
tightly log-log correlated with the underlying total gravitational mass. This
reflects the role of self-gravity in shaping their properties and enables
statistical predictions of their observational properties based on their mass.
We also focus on the properties of the simulated population of galaxy-sized
halos within filaments, and compare their properties to the results obtained
from the spectroscopic GAMA survey. Simulated and observed filaments with the
same length are found to contain an equal number of galaxies, with very similar
distribution of halo masses. The total number of galaxies within each filament
and the total/average stellar mass in galaxies can now be used to predict also
the large-scale properties of the gas in the host filaments across tens or
hundreds of Mpc in scale. These results are the first steps towards the future
use of galaxy catalogues in order to select the best targets for observations
of the warm-hot intergalactic medium.
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