UBC Undergraduate Research

Statistical analysis of the Big Ring superstructure Seo, Jason

Abstract

The Big Ring is an annular superstructure of Mg II absorbers discovered by Alexia Lopez et al. that has a diameter of 400 Mpc, suggesting that it exceeds the “large-scale” size threshold described by the Cosmological Principle. If the Big Ring, along with other ultra-large scale structures (ULSSs), is confirmed as a statistically significant structure, we may require modifications to the current Cosmological Principle and the ΛCDM model. I implement the Hubble Volume simulation data that accurately represents a ΛCDM Universe to emulate the field of view of the physical Big Ring. Then, I show that structures with size scales comparable to that of the Big Ring are more recurrent than is originally claimed. Structures with a semi-major axis as large as 1 Gpc are identified in the simulated data, and a total of 10 structures are identified in the simulated field of view. Convex Hull of Member Spheres (CHMS) and Minimal Spanning Tree (MST) significance tests are conducted on all identified structures, and it is found that no single significance value exceeds the standard significance benchmark of 3σ.

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International