2023/02/16 by Suman Sarkar, Sarkar, Suman, Ganesh Narayanan +3
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2302.08087
openalex publication_date 2023/02/16 · openalex created_date 2023/02/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We explore the environment of 351 grand-design and 541 flocculent spiral galaxies recently identified employing convolutional neural networks from the 17th data release of Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We introduce a novel estimator called the Local Geometric Index to quantify the morphology of the local environment of these 892 spirals. Based on the local geometric index of the galaxies, we identify their local environments to be voids, sheets, filaments or clusters. We find that grand-designs are mostly located in dense environments like clusters and filaments (∼ 76%), whereas a reasonable fraction of the flocculents lie in sparse environments like voids and sheets (∼ 45%). A p-value < 10 -10 from a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test indicates that our results are statistically significant at 99.9% confidence level. Further, we note that dense environments with large tidal flows are dominated by the grand-designs. Metal-poor environments, such as sheets and voids, with a high abundance of gas clouds, on the other hand, are mostly populated by the flocculents.