Cosmic web stripping and starvation of low-mass filament galaxies in TNG50
Abstract
Galaxy properties are known to correlate with their location within the cosmic web. However, the role of filaments remains poorly understood, particularly for low-mass galaxies, which are expected to be more sensitive to environmental effects. In this work, we use the TNG50-1 simulation to investigate the properties of low-mass 8 ≤ log(Mstar/Msun) ≤ 10 galaxies in filaments and in the field, when controlling for stellar and halo mass and excluding the role of groups and clusters. We find that their integrated properties, including stellar, halo mass assembly and quenched fractions, are similar between the two environments. However, we demonstrate that filament galaxies exhibit smaller and more asymmetric cold gas discs with respect to their field counterparts. We identify two main mechanisms driving these differences. For galaxies that entered filaments in the early Universe, during the phase of active accretion, cosmic web tidal fields modify the accretion of gas and dark matter. In some systems, accretion proceeds at rates comparable to the field but with a different geometry, leading to more tangential motions in the dark matter halo and, consequently, smaller gas discs. In others, the tidal field significantly suppresses both gas and dark matter accretion, leading to a starvation-like evolution, in which galaxies gradually exhaust their gas through star formation and can eventually quench. In contrast, galaxies that fall into filaments at late times can undergo cosmic web stripping, a rapid hydrodynamical removal of gas analogous to ram-pressure stripping in clusters. Our results suggest that spatially resolved gas properties are sensitive to several filament-driven environmental mechanisms.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{zakharova2026cosmic,
title = {{Cosmic web stripping and starvation of low-mass filament galaxies in TNG50}},
author = {Daria Zakharova and Gabriella De Lucia and Benedetta Vulcani and Lizhi Xie and Stefania Barsanti and Sean McGee},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2605.23457},
eprint = {2605.23457},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.23457},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Cosmic web stripping and starvation of low-mass filament galaxies in TNG50
AU - Daria Zakharova
AU - Gabriella De Lucia
AU - Benedetta Vulcani
AU - Lizhi Xie
AU - Stefania Barsanti
AU - Sean McGee
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/30
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2605.23457
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.23457
AB - Galaxy properties are known to correlate with their location within the cosmic web. However, the role of filaments remains poorly understood, particularly for low-mass galaxies, which are expected to be more sensitive to environmental effects. In this work, we use the TNG50-1 simulation to investigate the properties of low-mass 8 ≤ log(M_star/M_sun) ≤ 10 galaxies in filaments and in the field, when controlling for stellar and halo mass and excluding the role of groups and clusters. We find that their integrated properties, including stellar, halo mass assembly and quenched fractions, are similar between the two environments. However, we demonstrate that filament galaxies exhibit smaller and more asymmetric cold gas discs with respect to their field counterparts. We identify two main mechanisms driving these differences. For galaxies that entered filaments in the early Universe, during the phase of active accretion, cosmic web tidal fields modify the accretion of gas and dark matter. In some systems, accretion proceeds at rates comparable to the field but with a different geometry, leading to more tangential motions in the dark matter halo and, consequently, smaller gas discs. In others, the tidal field significantly suppresses both gas and dark matter accretion, leading to a starvation-like evolution, in which galaxies gradually exhaust their gas through star formation and can eventually quench. In contrast, galaxies that fall into filaments at late times can undergo cosmic web stripping, a rapid hydrodynamical removal of gas analogous to ram-pressure stripping in clusters. Our results suggest that spatially resolved gas properties are sensitive to several filament-driven environmental mechanisms.
ER -