Abstract

We present a weak lensing detection of filamentary structures in the cosmic web, combining data from the Kilo-Degree Survey, the Red Cluster Sequence Lensing Survey, and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey. The line connecting luminous red galaxies with a separation of 3-5 h(-1) Mpc was chosen as a proxy for the location of filaments. We measured the average weak lensing shear around similar to 11 000 candidate filaments selected in this way from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. After nulling the shear induced by the dark matter haloes around each galaxy, we reported a 3.4 sigma detection of an anisotropic shear signal from the matter that connects them. Adopting a filament density profile, motivated from N-body simulations, the average density at the centre of these filamentary structures was found to be 15 +/- 4 times the critical density.