Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
The question of which environmental processes operate in filaments still remains unresolved. Given the ubiquity of filaments and their importance in feeding clusters, a proper understanding of these mechanisms is crucial to building a more complete picture of galaxy evolution. Carrying out such an investigation requires access to large galaxy samples with spatially resolved information. As part of this effort, we analysed resolved H α maps of 685 galaxies inside and outside the filaments around the Virgo cluster, in addition to extensive measurements of the integrated physical properties. We created a pipeline to decompose the H α images into individual clumps that trace star-forming regions. We find that the number and average size of clumps in a galaxy are well-defined functions of distance and angular resolution. In particular, the power-law relation between the number of clumps and the distance of a galaxy is consistent with a fractal structure of star forming regions. We formulated an algorithm to compare filament and non-filament galaxies after removing observational differences. Although we do not have any conclusive evidence of a difference in clump size distributions between filament and non-filament galaxies, we do find that filament galaxies have slightly more peripheral clumps than their non-filament counterparts.
Nagaraj et al. (Thu,) studied this question.