Discovery of magnetic fields along stacked cosmic filaments as revealed by radio and X-ray emission

T. Vernstrom, G. Heald, F. Vazza, T. J. Galvin, J. L. West, N. Locatelli, N. Fornengo, E. Pinetti

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

39 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Diffuse filaments connect galaxy clusters to form the cosmic web. Detecting these filaments could yield information on the magnetic field strength, cosmic ray population, and temperature of intercluster gas; yet, the faint and large-scale nature of these bridges makes direct detections very challenging. Using multiple independent all-sky radio and X-ray maps we stack pairs of luminous red galaxies as tracers for cluster pairs. For the first time, we detect an average surface brightness between the clusters from synchrotron (radio) and thermal (X-ray) emission with greater than or similar to 5 sigma significance, on physical scales larger than observed to date (>= 3 Mpc). We obtain a synchrotron spectral index of alpha similar or equal to -1.0 and estimates of the average magnetic field strength of 30nG

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)4178-4196
Number of pages19
JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume505
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2021
Externally publishedYes

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