A theoretical view of the T-web statistical description of the cosmic web

¹ Sorbonne Université, CNRS, UMR7095, Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, 98 bis Boulevard Arago, 75014 Paris, France
e-mail: emma.aycoberry@iap.fr
² Universitäts-Sternwarte, Fakultät für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München, Scheinerstr. 1, 81679 München, Germany
³ Université Paris-Saclay, Université Paris Cité, CEA, CNRS, Astrophysique, Instrumentation et Modélisation Paris-Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France

Received: 5 October 2023
Accepted: 14 March 2024

Abstract

Context. The objective classification of the cosmic web into different environments is an important aspect of large-scale structure studies, as it can be used as a tool to study the formation of structures (halos and galaxies) in mode detail, and it forms a link between their properties and the large-scale environment; these different environments also offer another class of objects whose statistics contain cosmological information.

Aims. In this paper, we present an analytical framework to compute the probability of the different environments in the cosmic web based on the so-called T-web formalism, which classifies structures into four different classes (voids, walls, filaments, and knots) based on the eigenvalues of the Hessian of the gravitational potential, often called the tidal tensor.

Methods. Our classification method relies on studying whether the eigenvalues of this Hessian matrix are above or below a given threshold and thus requires knowledge of the joint probability distribution of those eigenvalues. We performed a change of variables in terms of rotational invariants, which are polynomials of the field variables and minimally correlated. We studied the distribution of those variables in the linear and quasi-linear regimes with the help of a so-called Gram-Charlier expansion, using tree-order Eulerian perturbation theory to compute the Gram-Charlier coefficients. This expansion then allowed us to predict the probability of the four different environments as a function of the chosen threshold and at a given smoothing scale and redshift for the density field. We checked the validity regime of our predictions by comparing those predictions to measurements made in the N-body Quijote simulations.

Results. Working with fields normalised by their linear variance, we find that scaling the threshold value with the non-linear amplitude of fluctuations allows us to capture almost the entire redshift evolution of the probabilities of the four environments, even if we assume that the density field is Gaussian (corresponding to the linear regime of structure formation). We also show that adding mild non-Gaussian corrections with the help of a Gram-Charlier expansion – hence introducing corrections that depend on third-order cumulants of the field – provides even greater accuracy, allowing us to obtain very precise predictions for cosmic web abundances up to scales of as small as ∼5 Mpc h⁻¹ and redshifts down to z ∼ 0.