Stacking the Cosmic Web in Fluorescent Lyman alpha Emission with MUSE

Abstract

Cosmological simulations suggest that most of the matter in the Universe is distributed along filaments connecting galaxies. Illuminated by the cosmic UV background (UVB), these structures are expected to glow in fluorescent Lyman alpha emission with a Surface Brightness (SB) that is well below current observational limits for individual detections. Here, we perform a stacking analysis of the deepest MUSE/VLT data using three-dimensional regions (subcubes) with orientations determined by the position of neighbouring Lyman alpha galaxies (LAEs) at 3<z<4. Our method should increase the probability of detecting filamentary Lyman alpha emission, provided that these structures are Lyman Limit Systems (LLSs). By stacking 390 oriented subcubes we reach a 2 sigma sensitivity level of SB ~ 0.44e-20 erg/s/cm^2/arcsec^2 in an aperture of 1 arcsec^2 x 6.25 Angstrom, which is three times below the expected fluorescent Lyman alpha signal from the Haardt-Madau 2012 (HM12) UVB at z~3.5. No detectable emission is found on intergalactic scales, implying that at least two thirds of our subcubes do not contain oriented LLSs for a HM12 UVB. On the other hand, significant emission is detected in the circum-galactic medium (CGM) of galaxies in the direction of the neighbours. The signal is stronger for galaxies with a larger number of neighbours and appears to be independent of any other galaxy properties such as luminosity, redshift and neighbour distance. We estimate that preferentially oriented satellite galaxies cannot contribute significantly to this signal, suggesting instead that gas densities in the CGM are typically larger in the direction of neighbouring galaxies on cosmological scales.

16 pages, 13 figures, 1 table

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Gas filaments of the cosmic web located around active galaxies in a proto-cluster
• The large and small scale properties of the intergalactic gas in the Slug Ly-alpha nebula revealed by MUSE HeII emission observations
• MUSE Analysis of Gas around Galaxies (MAGG) -- III: The gas and galaxy environment of z = 3-4.5 quasars
• The MUSE Extremely Deep Field: the Cosmic Web in Emission at High Redshift
• The MUSE Ultra Deep Field (MUDF). I. Discovery of a group of Ly$\alpha$ nebulae associated with a bright $z\approx 3.23$ quasar pair
• Surface Brightness Profile of Lyman-$\alpha$ Halos out to 320 kpc in HETDEX
• Rivers of Gas I.: Unveiling The Properties of High Redshift Filaments
• Constraining the cosmic UV background at z>3 with MUSE Lyman-α emission observations
• Probing the Diffuse Lyman-alpha Emission on Cosmological Scales: Lyα Emission Intensity Mapping Using the Complete SDSS-IV eBOSS Survey
• Detecting the Cosmic Web: Lyα Emission from Simulated Filaments at z=3