Missing baryons traced by the galaxy luminosity density in large-scale WHIM filaments

We propose a new approach to the problem of the missing baryons. Building on the common assumption that the missing baryons are in the form of the warm hot intergalactic medium (WHIM), we also assume here that the galaxy luminosity density can be used as a tracer of the WHIM. This last assumption is supported by our discovery of a significant correlation between the WHIM density and the galaxy luminosity density in recent hydrodynamical simulations. We also found that the percentage of the gas mass in the WHIM phase is substantially higher (by a factor of ~1.6) within large-scale galactic filaments, i.e. ~70%, compared to the average in the full simulation volume of ~0.1 Gpc3. The relation between the WHIM overdensity and the galaxy luminosity overdensity within the galactic filaments is consistent with a linear one: δwhim = 0.7 ± 0.1 × δLD0.9±0.2. We then applied our procedure to the line of sight towards the blazar H2356-309 and found evidence of WHIM that corresponds to the Sculptor Wall (SW) (z ~ 0.03 and log NH = 19.9+ 0.1-0.3) and Pisces-Cetus (PC) superclusters (z ~ 0.06 and log NH = 19.7+ 0.2-0.3), in agreement with the redshifts and column densities of the X-ray absorbers identified recently. This agreement indicates that the galaxy luminosity density and galactic filaments are reliable signposts for the WHIM and that our method is robust for estimating WHIM density. The signal that we detected cannot originate in the halos of nearby galaxies because they cannot account for the high WHIM column densities that our method and X-ray analysis consistently find in the SW and PC superclusters.