Detecting the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium through X-Ray Absorption Lines

The warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) at temperatures 10⁵-10⁷ K is believed to contain 30%-50% of the baryons in the local universe. However, all current X-ray detections of the WHIM at redshifts z > 0 are of low statistical significance (lsim 3σ) and/or controversial. In this work, we aim to establish the detection limits of current X-ray observatories and explore requirements for next-generation X-ray telescopes for studying the WHIM through X-ray absorption lines. We analyze all available grating observations of Mrk 421 and obtain spectra with signal-to-noise ratios (S/Ns) of ~90 and 190 per 50 mÅ spectral bin from Chandra and XMM-Newton observations, respectively. Although these spectra are two of the best ever collected with Chandra and XMM-Newton, we cannot confirm the two WHIM systems reported by Nicastro et al. in 2005. Our bootstrap simulations indicate that spectra with such high S/N cannot constrain the WHIM with O VII column densities N_{O VII}≈ 10^{15} cm^{-2} (corresponding to an equivalent width of 2.5 mÅ for a Doppler velocity of 50 km s^-1) at >~ 3σ significance level. The simulation results also suggest that it would take >60 Ms for Chandra and 140 Ms for XMM-Newton to measure the N_{OVII} at >=4σ from a spectrum of a background QSO with flux of ~0.2 mCrab (1 Crab = 2 × 10^-8 erg s^-1 cm^-2 at 0.5-2 keV). Future X-ray spectrographs need to be equipped with spectral resolution R ~ 4000 and effective area A >= 100 cm² to accomplish the similar constraints with an exposure time of ~2 Ms and would require ~11 Ms to survey the 15 QSOs with flux >~ 0.2 mCrab along which clear intergalactic O VI absorbers have been detected.