Weak-lensing Detection of Intercluster Filaments in Three Nearby Cluster Systems
Abstract Direct detection of intercluster filaments is challenging due to their low surface density, resulting in a weak deflection field. We present weak-lensing detections of intercluster filaments using wide-field Dark Energy Camera observations from the Local Volume Complete Cluster Survey. A matched-filter method was applied to identify filamentary structures in three nearby ( z < 0.1) systems centered on A401, A2029, and A3558. We discover two filaments (>3 σ ) in each system, with the strongest detections (5.2 σ –5.8 σ ) around A401 and A2029. In particular, we report the first robust weak-lensing detections (≳5 σ ) of the intercluster bridges connecting the cluster pairs A401/399, A2029/2033, A2029/SIG, and A3558/3556. Adopting a filament convergence model motivated by numerical simulations, we infer the maximum convergence ( κ 0 ) and characteristic width ( h c ) for all six filaments, yielding κ 0 ∼ 0.016–0.040 and h c ∼ 0.23–0.43 Mpc. The performance of the matched-filter technique is validated using mock shear catalogs and further tested on a null field around A2351. We explore the potential of using the B-mode lensing signal of filaments to suppress cluster-induced shear contamination. We also quantify the biasing effect of closely separated terminal clusters to the filament signal. These results demonstrate the feasibility of directly mapping dark matter filaments with current and future wide-field weak-lensing datasets.