Hydrodynamic Simulation of the Cosmological X-ray Background

Abstract

(Abridged) We use a hydrodynamic simulation of a LambdaCDM model to predict the extragalactic X-ray background (XRB), focussing on emission from the intergalactic medium (IGM). We also include X-rays from point sources associated with galaxies in the simulation, and make maps of the angular distribution of the emission. We find that filaments in the maps are not evident, being diluted by projection. In the soft (0.5-2 keV) band, the mean intensity of radiation from intergalactic and cluster gas is 2.3*10^-12 ergdeg^-2cm^-2s^-1, 35% of the total soft band emission. This is compatible at the ~1 sigma level with estimates of the unresolved soft background from ROSAT and {\it Chandra}. Only 4% of the hard (2-10 keV) emission is associated with the IGM. Relative to AGN flux, the IGM component peaks at a lower redshift (median z~0.45) so its clustering makes an important contribution to that of the total XRB. The angular correlations on 0.1-10 arcmin scales are significant, with an amplitude roughly consistent with an extrapolation of recent ROSAT results to small scales. A cross-correlation of the XRB against nearby galaxies taken from a simulated redshift survey also yields a strong signal from the IGM. Although some recent papers have argued that the expected soft band intensity from gas in galaxy, group, and cluster halos would exceed XRB limits unless much of the gas is expelled by supernova feedback, we obtain reasonable compatibility with current observations in a simulation that incorporates cooling, star formation, and only modest feedback. A prediction of our model is that the unresolved portion of the soft XRB will remain mostly unresolved.