The scaling relation between galaxy luminosity and WHIM density from EAGLE simulations with application to SDSS data

This paper presents an updated scaling relation between the optical luminosity density (LD) of galaxies in the r band and the density of the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) in cosmic filaments, using the high-resolution EAGLE simulations. We find a strong degree of correlation between the WHIM density and the galaxy luminosity density, resulting in a scaling relation between the two quantities that permits us to predict the WHIM density of filaments with a scatter of less than 1/2 dex in a broad range of smoothed filament luminosity densities. In order to estimate the performance of the simulation-based calibration of the LD-WHIM density relation, we applied it to a sample of low-redshift filaments detected with the Bisous method in the Legacy Survey SDSS DR12 data. In the volume covered by the SDSS data, our relation predicts a WHIM density amounting to 31 +/- 7 +/- 12 per cent (statistical errors followed by systematic) of cosmic baryon density. This agrees, albeit within the large uncertainties, with the current estimates of the cosmological missing baryon fraction, implying that our LD-WHIM density relation may be a useful tool in the search for the missing baryons. This method of analysis provides a new promising avenue to study the physical properties of the missing baryons, using an observable that is available for large volumes of the sky, complementary and independent from WHIM searches with absorption-line systems in the FUV or X-rays.