Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2015
The cosmic web is the intricate network of filaments outlined by the galaxies positions distribution in our Universe. One possible manner to break the complexity of such an elaborate geometrical structure is to assume it made of simple interacting objects. Under this hypothesis, the filamentary network can be considered as the realization of an object or a marked point process. These processes are probabilistic models dealing with configurations of random objects given by random points having random characteristics or marks. Here, the filamentary network is considered as the realization of such a process, with the objects being cylinders that align and connect in order to form the network. The paper presents the use of marked point processes to the detection and the characterization of the galactic filaments.