Cosmic Filaments in Superclusters

Abstract

Large-scale structure calculations show that modest overdensity filaments will connect clusters of galaxies and these filaments are reservoirs of baryons, mainly in gaseous form. To determine whether such filaments exist, we have examined the UV absorption line properties of three AGNs projected behind possible filaments in superclusters of galaxies; the AGNs lie within 3 Mpc of the centerlines of loci connecting clusters. All three lines of sight show absorption in Lyα, Lyβ, or/and OVI at redshifts within about 1300 km/s of the nearby galaxy clusters that would define the closest filaments. For one AGN, the absorption line redshifts are close to the emission line redshift of the AGN, so we cannot rule out self-absorption for this object. These absorption line associations with superclusters are unlikely to have occurred by chance, a result consistent with the presence of cosmic filaments within superclusters.

16 pages, 7 eps figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (21)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• The Cosmic Baryon Budget
• Where are the Baryons?
• Baryons in the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium
• Galaxy Clusters in Hubble Volume Simulations: Cosmological Constraints from Sky Survey Populations
• Cosmic Chemical Evolution
• The Supercluster-Void Network I. The Supercluster Catalogue and Large-Scale Distribution
• The Local Ly-alpha Forest IV: STIS G140M Spectra and Results on the Distribution and Baryon Content of HI Absorbers
• The Relationship Between Galaxies and Low Redshift Weak Lyman alpha Absorbers in the Directions of H1821+643 and PG1116+215
• The Local Lya Forest. III. Relationship between Lya Absorbers and Galaxies, Voids and Superclusters
• O VI and Multicomponent H I Absorption Associated with a Galaxy Group in the Direction of PG0953+415: Physical Conditions and Baryonic Content
• The X-Ray Forest: A New Prediction of Hierarchical Structure Formation Models
• Revealing the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium with OVI Absorption
• A uniform analysis of the Lyman alpha forest at z = 0-5: III. HST FOS Spectral Atlas
• A Very Sensitive 21cm Survey for Galactic High-Velocity HI
• Background X-ray Emission from Hot Gas in CDM and CDM+Lambda Universes: Spectral Signatures
• Absorption-Line Systems and Galaxies in Front of the Second Brightest Quasar, PHL 1811
• The North Ecliptic Pole Supercluster
• The Local Lyman-Alpha Forest: Absorbers in Galaxy Voids
• The Spectral Energy Distribution of the Seyfert galaxy Ton S180
• A uniform analysis of the Lyman alpha forest at z = 0-5: IV. The clustering and evolution of clouds at z < 1.7

Cited by in corpus (13)

• A High-Resolution Survey of Low-Redshift QSO Absorption Lines: Statistics and Physical Conditions of O VI Absorbers
• Inter-cluster filaments in a $\Lambda$CDM Universe
• Simulating the physical properties of dark matter and gas inside the cosmic web
• A Near-Solar Metallicity, Nitrogen-Deficient Lyman Limit Absorber Associated with two S0 Galaxies
• High Metallicity, Photoionised Gas in Intergalactic Large-Scale Filaments
• The O VI Absorbers Toward PG0953+415: High Metallicity, Cosmic-Web Gas Far From Luminous Galaxies
• Wide-Field Optical Spectroscopy of Abell 133: A Search for Filaments Reported in X-ray Observations
• Simulating the Soft X-ray excess in clusters of galaxies
• The Surprisingly Constant Strength of O VI Absorbers over Cosmic Time
• The association between gas and galaxies I: CFHT spectroscopy and pair analysis
• The dynamical state of Abell 2399: a bullet-like cluster
• The z = 0.0777 C III Absorber Towards PHL 1811 as a Case Study of a Low Redshift Weak Metal Line Absorber
• Optical circular polarization induced by axionlike particles in blazars