Analysis of the Spatial Distribution of Galaxies by Multiscale Methods

Abstract

Galaxies are arranged in interconnected walls and filaments forming a cosmic web encompassing huge, nearly empty, regions between the structures. Many statistical methods have been proposed in the past in order to describe the galaxy distribution and discriminate the different cosmological models. We present in this paper multiscale geometric transforms sensitive to clusters, sheets, and walls: the 3D isotropic undecimated wavelet transform, the 3D ridgelet transform, and the 3D beamlet transform. We show that statistical properties of transform coefficients measure in a coherent and statistically reliable way, the degree of clustering, filamentarity, sheetedness, and voidedness of a data set.