Detecting shocked intergalactic gas with X-ray and radio observations

Detecting the thermal and non-thermal emission from the shocked cosmic gas surrounding large-scale structures represents a challenge for observations, as well as a unique window into the physics of the warm-hot intergalactic medium. In this work, we present synthetic radio and X-ray surveys of large cosmological simulations in order to assess the chances of jointly detecting the cosmic web in both frequency ranges. We then propose best observing strategies tailored for existing (LOFAR, MWA and XMM) or future instruments (SKA-LOW and SKA-MID, ATHENA and eROSITA). We find that the most promising targets are the extreme peripheries of galaxy clusters in an early merging stage, where the merger causes the fast compression of warm-hot gas onto the virial region. By taking advantage of a detection in the radio band, future deep X-ray observations will probe this gas in emission, and help us to study plasma conditions in the dynamic warm-hot intergalactic medium with unprecedented detail.Comment: 22 pages, 25 Figures. A\&A accepted, in press. Moderate revision compared to version 1, with a few new figure

Simulated X-ray galaxy clusters at the virial radius: slopes of the gas density, temperature and surface brightness profiles

Using a set of hydrodynamical simulations of 9 galaxy clusters with masses in the range 1.5 10^{14} M_sun < M_vir < 3.4 10^{15} M_sun, we have studied the density, temperature and X-ray surface brightness profiles of the intracluster medium in the regions around the virial radius. We have analyzed the profiles in the radial range well above the cluster core, the physics of which are still unclear and matter of tension between simulated and observed properties, and up to the virial radius and beyond, where present observations are unable to provide any constraints. We have modeled the radial profiles between 0.3 R_200 and 3 R_200 with power laws with one index, two indexes and a rolling index. The simulated temperature and [0.5-2] keV surface brightness profiles well reproduce the observed behaviours outside the core. The shape of all these profiles in the radial range considered depends mainly on the activity of the gravitational collapse, with no significant difference among models including extraphysics. The profiles steepen in the outskirts, with the slope of the power-law fit that changes from -2.5 to -3.4 in the gas density, from -0.5 to -1.8 in the gas temperature, and from -3.5 to -5.0 in the X-ray soft surface brightness. We predict that the gas density, temperature and [0.5-2] keV surface brightness values at R_200 are, on average, 0.05, 0.60, 0.008 times the measured values at 0.3 R_200. At 2 R_200, these values decrease by an order of magnitude in the gas density and surface brightness, by a factor of 2 in the temperature, putting stringent limits on the detectable properties of the intracluster-medium (ICM) in the virial regions.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures; added reference and other minor change

Large-scale inhomogeneities of the intracluster medium: improving mass estimates using the observed azimuthal scatter

Using a set of hydrodynamical simulations of 62 galaxy clusters and groups we study the ICM of inhomogeneities, focusing on the ones on the large scale that, unlike clumps, are the most difficult to identify. To this purpose we introduce the concept of residual clumpiness, C_R, that quantifies the large-scale inhomogeneity of the ICM. After showing that this quantity can be robustly defined for relaxed systems, we characterize how it varies with radius, mass and dynamical state of the halo. Most importantly, we observe that it introduces an overestimate in the determination of the density profile from the X-ray emission, which translates into a systematic overestimate of 6 (12)% in the measurement of M_gas at R_200 for our relaxed (perturbed) cluster sample. At the same time, the increase of C_R with radius introduces also a ~2% systematic underestimate in the measurement of the hydrostatic-equilibrium mass (M_he), which adds to the previous one generating a systematic ~8.5% overestimate in f_gas in our relaxed sample. Since the residual clumpiness of the ICM is not directly observable, we study its correlation with the azimuthal scatter in the X-ray surface brightness of the halo and in the y-parameter profiles. We find that their correlation is highly significant (r_S = 0.6-0.7), allowing to define the azimuthal scatter measured in the X-ray surface brightness profile and in the y-parameter as robust proxies of C_R. After providing a function that connects the two quantities, we obtain that correcting the observed gas density profiles using the azimuthal scatter eliminates the bias in the measurement of M_gas for relaxed objects, which becomes (0+/-2)% up to 2R_200, and reduces it by a factor of 3 for perturbed ones. This method allows also to eliminate the systematics on the measurements of M_he and f_gas, although a significant halo to halo scatter remains. (abridged)Comment: 18 pages, 17 figures, 3 tables. Submitted to MNRAS, revised after referee's comment

Gas clumping in galaxy clusters

The reconstruction of galaxy cluster's gas density profiles is usually performed by assuming spherical symmetry and averaging the observed X-ray emission in circular annuli. In the case of a very inhomogeneous and asymmetric gas distribution, this method has been shown to return biased results in numerical simulations because of the $n^2$ dependence of the X-ray emissivity. We propose a method to recover the true density profiles in the presence of inhomogeneities, based on the derivation of the azimuthal median of the surface brightness in concentric annuli. We demonstrate the performance of this method with numerical simulations, and apply it to a sample of 31 galaxy clusters in the redshift range 0.04-0.2 observed with ROSAT/PSPC. The clumping factors recovered by comparing the mean and the median are mild and show a slight trend of increasing bias with radius. For $R<R_{500}$, we measure a clumping factor $\sqrt{C}<1.1$, which indicates that the thermodynamic properties and hydrostatic masses measured in this radial range are only mildly affected by this effect. Comparing our results with three sets of hydrodynamical numerical simulations, we found that non-radiative simulations significantly overestimate the level of inhomogeneities in the ICM, while the runs including cooling, star formation, and AGN feedback reproduce the observed trends closely. Our results indicate that most of the accretion of X-ray emitting gas is taking place in the diffuse, large-scale accretion patterns rather than in compact structures.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. Largely-improved version compared to v1, method and comparison with simulations update

The kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect of the large-scale structure (II): the effect of modified gravity

The key to understand the nature of dark energy relies in our ability to probe the distant Universe. In this framework, the recent detection of the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect signature in the cosmic microwave background obtained with the South Pole Telescope (SPT) is extremely useful since this observable is sensitive to the high-redshift diffuse plasma. We analyse a set of cosmological hydrodynamical simulation with 4 different realisations of a Hu & Sawicki $f(R)$ gravity model, parametrised by the values of $\overline{f}_{\rm R,0}=(0,-10^{-6},-10^{-5},-10^{-4})$, to compute the properties of the kSZ effect due to the ionized Universe and how they depend on $\overline{f}_{\rm R,0}$ and on the redshift of reionization, $z_{\rm re}$. In the standard General Relativity limit ($\overline{f}_{\rm R,0}$=0) we obtain an amplitude of the kSZ power spectrum of $\mathcal{D}^{\rm kSZ}_{3000}=4.1\,$$\mu$K$^2$ ($z_{\rm re}$=8.8), close to the $+1\sigma$ limit of the $\mathcal{D}^{\rm kSZ}_{3000}=(2.9\pm1.3)\,$$\mu$K$^2$ measurement by SPT. This corresponds to an upper limit on the kSZ contribute from patchy reionization of $\mathcal{D}^{\rm kSZ,patchy}_{3000}<0.9\,$$\mu$K$^2$ (95 per cent confidence level). Modified gravity boosts the kSZ signal by about 3, 12 and 50 per cent for $\overline{f}_{\rm R,0}=(-10^{-6},-10^{-5},-10^{-4})$, respectively, with almost no dependence on the angular scale. This means that with modified gravity the limits on patchy reionization shrink significantly: for $\overline{f}_{\rm R,0}=-10^{-5}$ we obtain $\mathcal{D}^{\rm kSZ,patchy}_{3000}<0.4\,$$\mu$K$^2$. Finally, we provide an analytical formula for the scaling of the kSZ power spectrum with $z_{\rm re}$ and $\overline{f}_{\rm R,0}$ at different multipoles: at $\ell=3000$ we obtain $\mathcal{D}^{\rm kSZ}_{3000}\propto z_{\rm re}^{0.24}\left(1+\sqrt{\left|\overline{f}_{\rm R,0}\right|}\right)^{41}$.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

Resolving the unresolved cosmic X-ray background in the Chandra Deep Fields

We present a measurement of the surface brightness of the cosmic X-ray background (CXB) in the Chandra Deep Fields, after excluding all detected X-ray, optical and infrared sources. The work is motivated by a recent X-ray stacking analysis by Worsley and collaborators, which showed that galaxies detected by HST but not by Chandra may account for most of the unresolved CXB at E>1 keV. We find that after excluding HST and Spitzer IRAC sources, some CXB still remains, but it is marginally significant: (3.4+/-1.4)x10^-13 ergs cm^-2 s^-1 deg^2 in the 1-2 keV band and (4+/-9)x10^-13 ergs cm^-2 s^-1 deg^2 in the 2-5 keV band, or 7%+/-3% and 4%+/-9% of the total CXB, respectively. Of the 1-2 keV signal resolved by the HST sources, 34%+/-2% comes from objects with optical colors typical of ``normal'' galaxies (which make up 25% of the HST sources), while the remaining flux comes from objects with colors of starburst and irregular galaxies. In the 0.65-1 keV band (just above the bright Galactic O VII line) the remaining diffuse intensity is (1.0+/-0.2)x10^-12 ergs cm^-2 s^-1 deg^2. This flux includes emission from the Galaxy as well as from the hypothetical warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM), and provides a conservative upper limit on the WHIM signal that comes interestingly close to theoretical predictions.Comment: 5 emulateapj pages, 4 figures, 1 table, accepted to ApJL (mostly minor improvements in response to referee's comments, in particular further treatment of uncertainties on resolved fluxes

The imprints of local superclusters on the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich signals and their detectability with Planck

We use high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations of large-scale structure formation to study the imprints of the local superclusters onto the full-sky Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) signals. Following (Mathis et al. 2002), the initial conditions have been statistically constrained to reproduce the density field within a sphere of 110 Mpc around the Milky Way, as observed in the IRAS 1.2-Jy all-sky redshift survey. As a result, the positions and masses of prominent galaxy clusters and superclusters in our simulations coincide closely with their real counterparts in the local universe. We present the results of two different runs, one with adiabatic gas physics only, and one also including cooling, star formation and feedback. By analysing the full-sky maps for the thermal and kinetic SZ signals extracted from these simulations, we find that for multipoles with l<100 the power spectrum is dominated by the prominent local superclusters, and its amplitude at these scales is a factor of two higher than that obtained from unconstrained simulations; at lower multipoles (l<20) this factor can even reach one order of magnitude. We check the influence of the SZ effect from local superclusters on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectrum at small multipoles and find it negligible and with no signs of quadrupole-octopole alignment. However, performing simulations of the CMB radiation including the experimental noise at the frequencies which will be observed by the Planck satellite, we find results suggesting that an estimate of the SZ power spectrum at large scales can be extracted.Comment: revised version, MNRAS, accepte

The effect of feedback on the emission properties of the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium

At present, 30-40 per cent of the baryons in the local Universe is still undetected. According to theoretical predictions, this gas should reside in filaments filling the large-scale structure (LSS) in the form of a Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM), at temperatures of 10^5 - 10^7 K, thus emitting in the soft X-ray energies via free-free interaction and line emission from heavy elements. In this work we characterize the properties of the X-ray emission of the WHIM, and the LSS in general, focusing on the influence of different physical mechanisms, namely galactic winds (GWs), black-hole feedback and star-formation, and providing estimates of possible observational constraints. To this purpose we use a set of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations that include a self-consistent treatment of star-formation and chemical enrichment of the intergalactic medium, that allows us to follow the evolution of different metal species. We construct a set of simulated light-cones to make predictions of the emission in the 0.3-10 keV energy range. We obtain that GWs increase by a factor of 2 the emission of both galaxy clusters and WHIM. The amount of oxygen at average temperature and, consequently, the amount of expected bright Ovii and Oviii lines is increased by a factor of 3 due to GWs and by 20 per cent when assuming a top-heavy IMF. We compare our results with current observational constraints and find that the emission from faint groups and WHIM should account from half to all of the unresolved X-ray background in the 1-2 keV band.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in the MNRAS. Minor changes after referee repor

Searching for galaxy clusters in the Kilo-Degree Survey

In this paper, we present the tools used to search for galaxy clusters in the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS), and our first results. The cluster detection is based on an implementation of the optimal filtering technique that enables us to identify clusters as over-densities in the distribution of galaxies using their positions on the sky, magnitudes, and photometric redshifts. The contamination and completeness of the cluster catalog are derived using mock catalogs based on the data themselves. The optimal signal to noise threshold for the cluster detection is obtained by randomizing the galaxy positions and selecting the value that produces a contamination of less than 20%. Starting from a subset of clusters detected with high significance at low redshifts, we shift them to higher redshifts to estimate the completeness as a function of redshift: the average completeness is ~ 85%. An estimate of the mass of the clusters is derived using the richness as a proxy. We obtained 1858 candidate clusters with redshift 0 < z_c < 0.7 and mass 13.5 < log(M500/Msun) < 15 in an area of 114 sq. degrees (KiDS ESO-DR2). A comparison with publicly available Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)-based cluster catalogs shows that we match more than 50% of the clusters (77% in the case of the redMaPPer catalog). We also cross-matched our cluster catalog with the Abell clusters, and clusters found by XMM and in the Planck-SZ survey; however, only a small number of them lie inside the KiDS area currently available.Comment: 13 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for publication on Astronomy & Astrophysic

The Santa Fe Light Cone Simulation Project: I. Confusion and the WHIM in Upcoming Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect Surveys

We present the first results from a new generation of simulated large sky coverage (~100 square degrees) Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (SZE) cluster surveys using the cosmological adaptive mesh refinement N-body/hydro code Enzo. We have simulated a very large (512^3h^{-3}Mpc^3) volume with unprecedented dynamic range. We have generated simulated light cones to match the resolution and sensitivity of current and future SZE instruments. Unlike many previous studies of this type, our simulation includes unbound gas, where an appreciable fraction of the baryons in the universe reside. We have found that cluster line-of-sight overlap may be a significant issue in upcoming single-dish SZE surveys. Smaller beam surveys (~1 arcmin) have more than one massive cluster within a beam diameter 5-10% of the time, and a larger beam experiment like Planck has multiple clusters per beam 60% of the time. We explore the contribution of unresolved halos and unbound gas to the SZE signature at the maximum decrement. We find that there is a contribution from gas outside clusters of ~16% per object on average for upcoming surveys. This adds both bias and scatter to the deduced value of the integrated SZE, adding difficulty in accurately calibrating a cluster Y-M relationship. Finally, we find that in images where objects with M > 5x10^{13} M_{\odot} have had their SZE signatures removed, roughly a third of the total SZE flux still remains. This gas exists at least partially in the Warm Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM), and will possibly be detectable with the upcoming generation of SZE surveys.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, version accepted to ApJ. Major revisions mad