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Context. The intergalactic medium (IGM) is believed to contain the majority of baryons in the universe and to trace the same dark matter structure as galaxies, forming filaments and sheets. Ly alpha absorbers, which sample the neutral component of the IGM, have been extensively studied at low and high redshift, but the exact relation between Ly alpha absorption, galaxies, and the large-scale structure is observationally not well constrained.Aims. In this study, we aim at characterising the relation between Ly alpha absorbers and nearby over-dense cosmological structures (galaxy filaments) at recession velocities Delta v <= 6700 km s(-1) by using archival observational data from various instruments.Methods. We analyse 587 intervening Ly alpha absorbers in the spectra of 302 extragalactic background sources obtained with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) installed on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). We combine the absorption line information with galaxy data of five local galaxy filaments from the V8k catalogue.Results. Along the 91 sightlines that pass close to a filament, we identify 215 (227) Ly alpha absorption systems (components). Among these, 74 Ly alpha systems are aligned in position and velocity with the galaxy filaments, indicating that these absorbers and the galaxies trace the same large-scale structure. The filament-aligned Ly alpha absorbers have a similar to 90% higher rate of incidence (d?/dz=189 for log N(HI) >= 13.2) and a slightly shallower column density distribution function slope (-beta=-1.47) relative to the general Ly alpha population at z=0, reflecting the filaments' matter over-density. The strongest Ly alpha absorbers are preferentially found near galaxies or close to the axis of a filament, although there is substantial scatter in this relation. Our sample of absorbers clusters more strongly around filament axes than a randomly distributed sample would do (as confirmed by a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test), but the clustering signal is less pronounced than for the galaxies in the filaments.
We study the gas distribution in the Milky Way and Andromeda using a constrained cosmological simulation of the Local Group (LG) within the context of the CLUES (Constrained Local UniversE Simulations) project. We analyse the properties of gas in the simulated galaxies at z = 0 for three different phases: 'cold', 'hot' and H i, and compare our results with observations. The amount of material in the hot halo (M-hot a parts per thousand 4-5 x 10(10) M-aS (TM)), and the cold (M-cold(r a parts per thousand(2) 10 kpc) a parts per thousand 10(8) M-aS (TM)) and H i components displays reasonable agreement with observations. We also compute the accretion/ejection rates together with the H i (radial and all-sky) covering fractions. The integrated H i accretion rate within r = 50 kpc gives similar to 0.2-0.3 M-aS (TM) yr(-1), i.e. close to that obtained from high-velocity clouds in the Milky Way. We find that the global accretion rate is dominated by hot material, although ionized gas with T a parts per thousand(2) 10(5) K can contribute significantly too. The net accretion rates of all material at the virial radii are 6-8 M-aS (TM) yr(-1). At z = 0, we find a significant gas excess between the two galaxies, as compared to any other direction, resulting from the overlap of their gaseous haloes. In our simulation, the gas excess first occurs at z similar to 1, as a result of the kinematical evolution of the LG.