Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS
Volume 724, Issue 1, Pages L25-L29Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/724/1/L25
Keywords
cosmology: observations; intergalactic medium; large-scale structure of universe
Categories
Funding
- NSF [AST-0707417]
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Japanese Monbukagakusho
- Max Planck Society
- Higher Education Funding Council for England
- American Museum of Natural History
- Astrophysical Institute Potsdam
- University of Basel
- University of Cambridge
- Case Western Reserve University
- University of Chicago
- Drexel University
- Fermilab
- Institute for Advanced Study
- Japan Participation Group
- Johns Hopkins University
- Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics
- Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
- Korean Scientist Group
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (LAMOST)
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA)
- Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPA)
- New Mexico State University
- Ohio State University
- University of Pittsburgh
- University of Portsmouth
- Princeton University
- United States Naval Observatory
- University of Washington
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We present an analysis of the large-scale galaxy distribution around two possible warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) absorption systems reported along the Markarian 421 sight line. Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we find a prominent galaxy filament at the redshift of the z = 0.027 X-ray absorption line system. The filament exhibits a width of 3.2 Mpc and a length of at least 20 Mpc, comparable to the size of WHIM filaments seen in cosmological simulations. No individual galaxies fall within 350 projected kpc so it is unlikely that the absorption is associated with gas in a galaxy halo or outflow. Another, lower-significance X-ray absorption system was reported in the same Chandra spectrum at z = 0.011, but the large-scale structure in its vicinity is far weaker and may be a spurious alignment. By searching for similar galaxy structures in 140 random smoothed SDSS fields, we estimate an similar to 5%-10% probability of the z = 0.027 absorber-filament alignment occurring by chance. If these two systems are indeed physically associated, this would represent the first known coincidence between a large-scale galaxy structure and a blind X-ray WHIM detection.
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