Filaments have recently been identified as a critical environment for galaxy formation. Despite being in the "field" (ie vs in a cluster), galaxies in filaments exhibit interesting properties including unexpected angular momentum and shape alignments, galaxy stellar mass functions that differ from the norm, as well as quenched star formation rates compared to galaxies of the same mass but in other environments. Yet since filaments are not collapsed objects there is no first principle theory to describe them. Instead a myriad of suggestions - some motivated by observational data others motivated by theoretical ideas - have dominated the literature in an attempt to capture the essence of the filamentary environment.

This session aims to take stock and recap recent theoretical and observational achievements related to cosmic filaments (as the central component of the cosmic web) and to discuss upcoming investigations and ideas. These include the different methods to identify filaments, different components, i.e. gas, star and dark matter, as tracers with only the first two can be directly applied to observations, filament properties, and the link with galaxy formation, clusters of galaxies evolution and therefore their impact on cosmology.

Programme

• Cosmic filaments from both theoretical and observational points of view
• Filaments properties
• Filaments connections with galaxy formation, galaxy clusters and cosmology

Invited speakers

• Ryan de Weygaert (University of Groningen)
• Nabila Aghanim (Universite Paris Sud)

Scientific organisers

Weiguang Cui (UAM,UE); Noam Libeskind (AIP), Alexander Knebe(UAM), Elmo Tempel(TO,UT), Ulrike Kuchner (UN), Celine Gouin (KIAS), Marco De Petris (SAP)

Contact

Weiguang Cui (weiguang.cui @ uam.es); Noam Libeskind (nlibeskind @ aip.de)