First detection of stacked X-ray emission from cosmic web filaments

Abstract: We report the first statistical detection of X-ray emission from cosmic web filaments in ROSAT data. We selected 15,165 filaments at 0.2<z<0.6 ranging from 30 Mpc to 100 Mpc in length, identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) survey. We stacked the X-ray count-rate maps from ROSAT around the filaments, excluding resolved galaxy groups and clusters above the mass of ~3 * 10^13 Msun as well as the detected X-ray point sources from the ROSAT, Chandra, and XMM-Newton observations. The stacked signal results in the detection of the X-ray emission from the cosmic filaments at a significance of 4.2 sigma in the energy band of 0.56-1.21 keV. The signal is interpreted, assuming the Astrophysical Plasma Emission Code (APEC) model, as an emission from the hot gas in the filament-core regions with an average gas temperature of 0.9(+1.0-0.6) keV and a gas overdensity of ~30 at the center of the filaments. Furthermore, we show that stacking the SRG/eROSITA data for ~2,000 filaments only would lead to a ~5 sigma detection of their X-ray signal, even with an average gas temperature as low as ~0.3 keV.