2017/03/22 by S. Brown, T. Vernstrom, E. Carretti +7
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.CO
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stx746
9 pages, 6 figures, accepted to MNRAS
arxiv created 2017/03/22 · arxiv updated 2017/05/10
We set limits on the presence of the synchrotron cosmic web through the cross-correlation of the 2.3 GHz S-PASS survey with a model of the local cosmic web derived from constrained magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations. The MHD simulation assumes cosmologically seeded magnetic fields amplified during large-scale structure formation, and a population of relativistic electrons/positrons from proton-proton collisions within the intergalactic medium. We set a model-dependent 3σ upper limit on the synchrotron surface brightness of 0.16 mJy arcmin-2 at 2.3 GHz in filaments. Extrapolating from magnetic field maps created from the simulation, we infer an upper limit (density-weighted) magnetic field of 0.03 (0.13) μG in filaments at the current epoch, and a limit on the primordial magnetic field (PMF) of BPMF~1.0 nG.