Prospect for WHIM detection in the cosmic web by SRG/eROSITA
Abstract
Hydrodynamical simulations predict that the cosmic web contains the majority of the missing baryons in the form of plasma, called the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM). However, its direct measurement through X-ray emissions has been prevented for decades due to the weak signal and the complex morphology of cosmic filaments. We report the first statistical detection of X-ray emission from cosmic web filaments with the ROSAT data. We identified more than 15,000 large-scale filaments, spanning 30-100 Mpc length, in the SDSS survey and statistically detected X-ray emissions from the WHIM at 4.2 sigma confidence level using the ROSAT maps. Given this detection, we can expect a much more significant detection from SRG/eROSITA and indeed predicted the detectability of the WHIM. The prediction shows that stacking ∼2000 filaments only would lead to a 5σ detection with an average gas temperature of the WHIM as low as ∼0.3 keV.
- Publication:
-
The Sixteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting. On Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity, Astrophysics, and Relativistic Field Theories
- Pub Date:
- July 2023
- DOI:
- 10.1142/9789811269776_0279
- Bibcode:
- 2023mgm..conf.3400T