The O VII X-Ray Forest Toward Markarian 421: Consistency between XMM-Newton and Chandra
Recently the first detections of highly ionized gas associated with two Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM) filaments have been reported. The evidence is based on X-ray absorption lines due to O VII and other ions observed by Chandra towards the bright blazar Mrk 421. We investigate the robustness of this detection by a re-analysis of the original Chandra LETGS spectra, the analysis of a large set of XMM-Newton RGS spectra of Mrk 421, and additional Chandra observations. We address the reliability of individual spectral features belonging to the absorption components, and assess the significance of the detection of these components. We also use Monte Carlo simulations of spectra. We confirm the apparent strength of several features in the Chandra spectra, but demonstrate that they are statistically not significant. This decreased significance is due to the number of redshift trials that are made and that are not taken into account in the original discovery paper. Therefore these features must be attributed to statistical fluctuations. This is confirmed by the RGS spectra, which have a higher signal to noise ratio than the Chandra spectra, but do not show features at the same wavelengths. Finally, we show that the possible association with a Ly{alpha} absorption system also lacks sufficient statistical evidence. We conclude that there is insufficient observational proof for the existence of the two proposed WHIM filaments towards Mrk 421, the brightest X-ray blazar on the sky. Therefore, the highly ionized component of the WHIM still remains to be discovered.
- Research Organization:
- Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-76SF00515
- OSTI ID:
- 881780
- Report Number(s):
- SLAC-PUB-11844; astro-ph/0604519
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Multiwavelength observations of Markarian 421 in 2005-2006.
A HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE/COSMIC ORIGINS SPECTROGRAPH SEARCH FOR WARM-HOT BARYONS IN THE Mrk 421 SIGHT LINE