A warm hot intergalactic medium towards 3C 120?

Abstract

We observed the Seyfert I active galaxy/broad line radio galaxy 3C120 with the Chandra high energy transmission gratings and present an analysis of the soft X-ray spectrum. We identify the strongest absorption feature (detected at >99.9% confidence) with O VIII Lya (FWHM=1010^{+295}_{-265} km/s), blueshifted by -5500 +/- 140 km/s from systemic velocity. The absorption may be due to missing baryons in warm/hot intergalactic medium (WHIGM) along the line-of-sight to 3C 120 at z=0.0147 +/- 0.0005, or it could be intrinsic to the jet of 3C 120. Assuming metallicities of 0.1 solar, we estimate an ionic column density of N_{O VIII}>3.4 \times 10^{16} cm^{-2} for WHIGM and a filament depth of <19 h^{-1}_{70} Mpc. We find a baryon overdensity >56 relative to the critical density of a $\Lambda$-dominated cold dark matter universe, which is in reasonable agreement with WHIGM simulations. We detect, at marginal significance, absorption of O VIII Lya at z\sim 0 due to a hot medium in the Local Group. We also detect an unidentified absorption feature at \sim 0.71 keV. Absorption features which might be expected along with O VIII Lya, were not significant statistically. Relative abundances of metals in the WHIGM and local absorbers may therefore be considerably different from solar.