本文首次将空洞统计方法扩展到 Einstein Toolkit 的数值相对论宇宙学模拟，构建无牛顿近似的空洞目录，并验证其统计与牛顿 N 体结果大致一致，同时量化空洞内膨胀加快10–30%、中心曲率密度参数达60–80%。
摘要：
我们将空洞统计的标准工具应用并扩展到通过数值相对论（NR）求解爱因斯坦方程的宇宙学模拟。利用一种新的分水岭空洞探测器，我们在 Einstein Toolkit 生成的基于流体的 NR 模拟上运行，获得了不含牛顿近似的模拟空洞目录。我们比较并对照了空洞尺度和空洞占比的不同度量，并将径向叠加密度剖面与经验推导的 Hamaus-Sutter-Wandelt（HSW）密度剖面以及基于到空洞边界距离的剖面进行比较。在比较有意义的范围内，我们恢复了与牛顿 N 体模拟大致一致的统计结果。我们研究了动力学空间曲率和局部膨胀的变化，明确展示了这些量在空洞区域内的空间涨落。我们发现模拟中的空洞膨胀速度比全局平均快约10–30%，而空洞中心的空间曲率密度参数达到约60–80%。
英文摘要：
We apply and extend standard tools for void statistics to cosmological simulations that solve Einstein's equations with numerical relativity (NR). We obtain a simulated void catalogue without Newtonian approximations, using a new watershed void finder which operates on fluid-based NR simulations produced with the Einstein Toolkit. We compare and contrast measures of void size and void fraction, and compare radial stacked density profiles to empirically-derived Hamaus-Sutter-Wandelt (HSW) density profiles and profiles based on distance to void boundaries. We recover statistics roughly consistent with Newtonian N-body simulations where such a comparison is meaningful. We study variation of dynamical spatial curvature and local expansion explicitly demonstrating the spatial fluctuations of these quantities in void regions. We find that voids in our simulations expand ~10-30% faster than the global average and the spatial curvature density parameter in the centre of voids reaches ~60-80%.
We apply our tetrad-based approach for constructing spherically-symmetric solutions in general relativity to modelling a void, and compare it with the standard Lemaître-Tolman-Bondi (LTB) formalism. In particular, we construct models for the void observed in the direction of Draco in the WISE-2MASS galaxy survey, and a corresponding cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature decrement in the Planck data in the same direction. We find that the present-day density and velocity profiles of the void are not well constrained by the existing data, so that void models produced from the two approac…
Modelling cosmic voids as spheres in Euclidean space, the notion of a de-Sitter configuration space is introduced. It is shown that a uniform distribution over this configuration space yields a power-law approximating the void size distribution in an intermediate range of volumes, as well as an estimate for the fractal dimension of the large scale structure.
Starting from the geometrical concept of a 4-dimensional de-Sitter configuration of spheres in Euclidean 3-space and modelling voids in the Universe as spheres, we show that a uniform distribution over this configuration space implies a power-law for the void number density which is consistent with results from the excursion set formalism and with data, for an intermediate range of void volumes. The scaling dimension of the large scale structure can be estimated as well. We also discuss the effect of restricting the survey geometry on the void statistics. This work is a new application of de-S…
Understanding the internal structure and spatial distribution of cosmic voids is crucial when considering them as probes of cosmology. We present recent advances in modeling void density- and velocity-profiles in real space, as well as void two-point statistics in redshift space, by examining voids identified via the watershed transform in state-of-the-art $Λ$CDM n-body simulations and mock galaxy catalogs. The simple and universal characteristics that emerge from these statistics indicate the self-similarity of large-scale structure and suggest cosmic voids to be among the most pristine objec…
Cosmic voids are promising tools for cosmological tests due to their sensitivity to dark energy, modified gravity and alternative cosmological scenarios. Most previous studies in the literature of void properties use cosmological N-body simulations of dark matter (DM) particles that ignore the potential effect of baryonic physics. Using a spherical underdensity finder, we analyse voids using the mass field and subhalo tracers in the EAGLE simulations, which follow the evolution of galaxies in a $\rmΛ$ cold dark matter Universe with state-of-the-art subgrid models for baryonic processes in a $(…
We study scaling behaviour of statistics of voids in the context of the halo model of nonlinear large-scale structure. The halo model allows us to understand why the observed galaxy void probability obeys hierarchical scaling, even though the premise from which the scaling is derived is not satisfied. We argue that the commonly observed negative binomial scaling is not fundamental, but merely the result of the specific values of bias and number density for typical galaxies. The model implies quantitative relations between void statistics measured for two populations of galaxies, such as SDSS r…
We introduce new statistical methods for the study of cosmic voids, focusing on the statistics of largest size voids. We distinguish three different types of distributions of voids, namely, Poisson-like, lognormal-like and Pareto-like distributions. The last two distributions are connected with two types of fractal geometry of the matter distribution. Scaling voids with Pareto distribution appear in fractal distributions with box-counting dimension smaller than three (its maximum value), whereas the lognormal void distribution corresponds to multifractals with box-counting dimension equal to t…
The voids between galaxies are identified with the volumes of the Poisson Voronoi tessellation. Two new survival functions for the apparent radii of voids are derived. The sectional normalized area of the Poisson Voronoi tessellation is modelled by the Kiang function and by the exponential function. Two new survival functions with equivalent sectional radius are therefore derived; they represent an alternative to the survival function of voids between galaxies as given by the self-similar distribution. The spatial appearance of slices of the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey is simulated.
We present new numerical tools to analyse cosmic void catalogues, implemented inside the CosmoBolognaLib, a large set of Open Source C++/Python numerical libraries. The CosmoBolognaLib provides a common numerical environment for cosmological calculations. This work extends these libraries by adding new algorithms for cosmological analyses of cosmic voids, covering the existing gap between theory and observations. We implemented new methods to model the size function of cosmic voids, in both observed and simulated samples of dark matter and biased tracers. Moreover, we provide new numerical too…
Optimization of Tessellation-based Statistics: Void Statistics
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)（洛桑联邦理工学院）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）；Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院南京天文光学技术研究所）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）
Using a mapping from dark matter halos to galaxy properties based on hydrodynamical simulations, we explore the impact of galaxy properties on the void size function and the void-galaxy correlation function. We replicate the properties of galaxies from Illustris on MassiveNus halos, to perform both luminosity and star formation rate cuts on MassiveNus halos. We compare the impact of such cuts on voids properties with respect to cuts on halo mass (as usually performed on halo catalogs driven from N-body simulations). We find that void catalogs built from luminosity-selected galaxies and halos a…
When do the nonlinear effects of general relativity matter in astrophysical situations? They are obviously relevant for very compact sources of the gravitational field, such as neutron stars or black holes. In this paper I discuss another, less obvious situation, in which large relativistic effects may arise due to a complicated, multiscale structure of the matter distribution. I present an exact solution with an inhomogeneous energy density distribution in the form of a hierarchy of nested voids and overdensities of various sizes, extending from the homogeneity scale down to arbitrary small s…
Do void statistics contain information beyond the tracer 2-point correlation function? Yes! As we vary the sum of the neutrino masses, we find void statistics contain information absent when using just tracer 2-point statistics. Massive neutrinos uniquely affect cosmic voids. We explore their impact on void clustering using both the DEMNUni and MassiveNuS simulations. For voids, neutrino effects depend on the observed void tracers. As the neutrino mass increases, the number of small voids traced by cold dark matter particles increases and the number of large voids decreases. Surprisingly, when…
We present a general analytical formalism to calculate accurately several statistics related to underdense regions in the Universe. The statistics are computed for dark matter halo and galaxy distributions both in real space and redshift space at any redshift. Using this formalism, we found that void statistics for galaxy distributions can be obtained, to a very good approximation, assuming galaxies to have the same clustering properties as halos above a certain mass. We deducted a relationship between this mass and that of halos with the same accumulated number density as the galaxies. We als…
Cosmic voids are the major volume component in the matter distribution of the Universe. They posses great potential for constraining dark energy as well as for testing theories of gravity. Nevertheless, in spite of their growing popularity as cosmological probes, a gap of knowledge between cosmic void observations and theory still persists. In particular, the void size function models proposed in literature have been proven unsuccessful in reproducing the results obtained from cosmological simulations in which cosmic voids are detected from biased tracers of the density field, undermining the …
Università di Trieste（的里雅斯特大学）；INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste（意大利国家天体物理研究所的里雅斯特天文台）；ICSC – Centro Nazionale di Ricerca in High Performance Computing, Big Data e Quantum Computing（高性能计算、大数据与量子计算国家研究中心）；INFN – Sezione di Trieste（意大利国家核物理研究所的里雅斯特分部）；IFPU – Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe（宇宙基础物理学研究所）；University Observatory, LMU Faculty of Physics（慕尼黑大学物理学院天文台）；Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS/IN2P3, CPPM（艾克斯-马赛大学，法国国家科学研究中心/欧洲粒子物理研究所，普罗旺斯粒子物理中心）
Combining galaxy cluster and void abundances breaks the degeneracy between mean matter density $Ω_{\rm m}$ and power spectrum normalization $σ_8$. In a first for voids, we constrain $Ω_{\rm m} = 0.21 \pm 0.10$ and $σ_8 = 0.95 \pm 0.21$ for a flat $Λ$CDM universe, using extreme-value statistics on the claimed largest cluster and void. The Planck-consistent results detect dark energy with two objects, independently of other dark energy probes. Cluster-void studies also offer complementarity in scale, density, and non-linearity - of particular interest for testing modified-gravity models.
Stereology allows shifting from the 3D distribution of the volumes of Poissonian Voronoi Diagrams to their 2D cross-sections. The basic assumption is that the 3D statistics of the volumes of the voids in the local Universe has a distribution function of the gamma-type. The standard rule of conversion from 3D volumes to 2D circles, adopting the standard rules of stereology, produces a new probability density function of the radii which contains the Meijer $G$-function. A non-Poissonian distribution of volumes is also considered. The distribution of the 3D radii of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey D…
We propose a novel technique to probe the expansion history of the Universe based on the clustering statistics of cosmic voids. In particular, we compute their two-point statistics in redshift space on the basis of realistic mock galaxy catalogs and apply the Alcock-Paczynski test. In contrast to galaxies, we find void auto-correlations to be marginally affected by peculiar motions, providing a model-independent measure of cosmological parameters without systematics from redshift-space distortions. Because only galaxy-galaxy and void-galaxy correlations have been considered in these types of s…
To study the impact of sparsity and galaxy bias on void statistics, we use a single large-volume, high-resolution N-body simulation to compare voids in multiple levels of subsampled dark matter, halo populations, and mock galaxies from a Halo Occupation Distribution model tuned to different galaxy survey densities. We focus our comparison on three key observational statistics: number functions, ellipticity distributions, and radial density profiles. We use the hierarchical tree structure of voids to interpret the impacts of sampling density and galaxy bias, and theoretical and empirical functi…
Robustness of cosmic void statistics: insights from SDSS DR7 and the ELUCID simulation
Shanghai Astronomical Observatory（上海天文台）；State Key Laboratory of Dark Matter Physics, Tsung-Dao Lee Institute & School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（暗物质物理全国重点实验室、李政道理论与计算科学中心、物理与天文学院，上海交通大学）；Shanghai Key Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology, and Key Laboratory for Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology Ministry of Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（粒子物理与宇宙学上海市重点实验室、教育部粒子物理、天体物理与宇宙学重点实验室，上海交通大学）；School of Aerospace Science and Technology, Xidian University（空间科学与技术学院，西安电子科技大学）
Cosmic voids are becoming key players in testing the physics of our Universe. Here we concentrate on the abundances and the dynamics of voids as these are among the best candidates to provide information on cosmological parameters. Cai, Padilla \& Li (2014) use the abundance of voids to tell apart Hu \& Sawicki $f(R)$ models from General Relativity. An interesting result is that even though, as expected, voids in the dark matter field are emptier in $f(R)$ gravity due to the fifth force expelling away from the void centres, this result is reversed when haloes are used to find voids. The abunda…
Upcoming surveys such as \LSST{} and \Euclid{} will significantly improve the power of weak lensing as a cosmological probe. To maximise the information that can be extracted from these surveys, it is important to explore novel statistics that complement standard weak lensing statistics such as the shear-shear correlation function and peak counts. In this work, we use a recently proposed weak lensing observable -- weak lensing voids -- to make parameter constraint forecasts for an LSST-like survey. We use the \cosmoslics{} $w$CDM simulation suite to measure void statistics as a function of cos…
Radial velocity statistics of cosmic voids as a probe of interacting dark energy
The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学）；Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学）；Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, UMR 7095, CNRS, Sorbonne Université（巴黎天体物理学研究所，CNRS，索邦大学）
We perform a statistical study of the global motion of cosmic voids using both a numerical simulation and observational data. We analyse their relation to large-scale mass flows and the physical effects that drive those motions. We analyse the bulk motions of voids, defined by the mean velocity of haloes in the surrounding shells in the numerical simulation, and by galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7. We find void mean bulk velocities close to 400 km/s, comparable to those of haloes (~ 500-600 km/s), depending on void size and the large-scale environment. Statistically, sma…
We present a comparison of void properties between the standard model of cosmology, $Λ$ Cold Dark Matter ($Λ$CDM), and two alternative cosmological models with evolving and interacting dark sectors: a quintessence model ($ϕ$CDM) and a Coupled Dark Matter-Dark Energy (CDE) model. Using $N$-body simulations of these models, we derive several measures of void statistics and properties, including distributions of void volume, ellipticity, prolateness, and average density. We find that the volume distribution derived from the CDE simulation deviates from the volume distribution derived from the $Λ$…
Multiprobe cosmology forecasts from halo-occupation-distribution-based forward modeling of galaxy and void statistics
Steward Observatory, University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学斯图尔德天文台）；Department of Physics, University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学物理系）；Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS/IN2P3, CPPM（艾克斯-马赛大学，法国国家科学研究中心/法国国家核子和粒子物理研究所，粒子与宇宙学中心）；Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Peyton Hall, Princeton University（普林斯顿大学天体物理学系）；Universitäts-Sternwarte München, Fakultät für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität（慕尼黑大学天文台，慕尼黑大学物理学院）
We present a systematic comparison of several existing and new void finding algorithms, focusing on their potential power to test a particular class of modified gravity models - chameleon $f(R)$ gravity. These models deviate from standard General Relativity (GR) more strongly in low-density regions and thus voids are a promising venue to test them. We use Halo Occupation Distribution (HOD) prescriptions to populate haloes with galaxies, and tune the HOD parameters such that the galaxy two-point correlation functions are the same in both f(R) and GR models. We identify both 3D voids as well as …
Cosmic voids are a promising environment to characterize neutrino-induced effects on the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe. We perform a comprehensive numerical study of the statistical properties of voids, identified both in the matter and galaxy distributions, in massive and massless neutrino cosmologies. The matter density field is obtained by running several independent $N$-body simulations with cold dark matter and neutrino particles, while the galaxy catalogs are modeled by populating the dark matter halos in simulations via a halo occupation distribution (HOD) model to …
We investigate void properties in $f(R)$ models using N-body simulations, focusing on their differences from General Relativity (GR) and their detectability. In the Hu-Sawicki $f(R)$ modified gravity (MG) models, the halo number density profiles of voids are not distinguishable from GR. In contrast, the same $f(R)$ voids are more empty of dark matter, and their profiles are steeper. This can in principle be observed by weak gravitational lensing of voids, for which the combination of a spectroscopic redshift and a lensing photometric redshift survey over the same sky is required. Neglecting th…
We study the statistics of various large-scale structure tracers in gravity-only cosmological simulations including baryons and cold dark matter (CDM) initialized with two different transfer functions, and simulated as two distinct fluids. This allows us to study the impact of baryon-CDM relative perturbations on these statistics. In particular, we focus on the statistics of cosmic voids, as well as on the matter and halo real-space 2-point correlation function and baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) peak. We find that the void size function is affected at the 1-2% level at maximum, and that th…
CSST large-scale structure analysis pipeline: IV. Cosmic Voids Identified from Galaxy Group Samples as Probes of the Large-scale Structure
Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院国家天文台）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences(UCAS)（中国科学院大学）
A key goal in cosmology in the upcoming decade will be to form a better understanding of the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Upcoming surveys, such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), Euclid and the Square Killometer Array (SKA) will deliver key datasets required to tackle this and other puzzles in contemporary cosmology. With this data, constraints of unprecedented power will be put on different models of dark energy and modified gravity. In this context it is crucial to understand how screening mechanisms, which hide the deviations of the…
Primordial non-Gaussianity (NG) affects the large scale structure (LSS) of the universe by leaving an imprint on the distribution of matter at late times. Much attention has been focused on using the distribution of collapsed objects (i.e. dark matter halos and the galaxies and galaxy clusters that reside in them) to probe primordial NG. An equally interesting and complementary probe however is the abundance of extended underdense regions or voids in the LSS. The calculation of the abundance of voids using the excursion set formalism in the presence of primordial NG is subject to the same tech…
Modified gravity (MG) theories aim to reproduce the observed acceleration of the Universe by reducing the dark sector while simultaneously recovering General Relativity (GR) within dense environments. Void studies appear to be a suitable scenario to search for imprints of alternative gravity models on cosmological scales. Voids cover an interesting range of density scales where screening mechanisms fade out, which reaches from a density contrast $δ\approx -1$ close to their centers to $δ\approx 0$ close to their boundaries. We present an analysis of the level of distinction between GR and two …
Cosmic voids evolution in modified gravity via hydrodynamics
Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”（那不勒斯费德里科二世大学）；INFN Sezione di Napoli（意大利国家核物理研究所那不勒斯分部）；ICTP, International Centre for Theoretical Physics（国际理论物理中心）；Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute（平顿研究所计算天体物理学中心）；Università degli Studi di Torino（都灵大学）；INFN-Sezione di Torino（意大利国家核物理研究所都灵分部）；INAF-Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino（意大利国家天体物理研究所都灵天文台）
We study the impact of cosmological scale modifications to General Relativity on the dynamics of halos within voids by comparing N-body simulations incorporating Hu-Sawicki $f(R)$ gravity, with $|f_{R0}|=10^{-6}$ and $10^{-5}$, to those of $Λ$CDM. By examining the radial velocity statistics within voids classified based on their size and density-profile, as "rising" ($R$-type) or "shell" ($S$-type), we find that halo motions in small $R$-type voids, with effective radius $<15 Mpc/h$, reveal distinctive differences between $f(R)$ and $Λ$CDM cosmologies. To understand this observed effect, we st…
Dark energy observations may be explained within general relativity using an inhomogeneous Hubble-scale depression in the matter density and accompanying curvature, which evolves naturally out of an Einstein-de Sitter (EdS) model. We present a simple parameterization of a void which can reproduce concordance model distances to arbitrary accuracy, but can parameterize away from this to give a smooth density profile everywhere. We show how the Hubble constant is not just a nuisance parameter in inhomogeneous models because it affects the shape of the distance-redshift relation. Independent Hubbl…
Cosmic voids are promising cosmological laboratories for studying the dark energy phenomenon and alternative gravity theories. They are receiving special attention nowadays in view of the new generation of galaxy spectroscopic surveys, which are covering an unprecedented volume and redshift range. There are two primary statistics in void studies: (i) the void size function, which characterises the abundance of voids, and (ii) the void-galaxy cross-correlation function, which contains information about the density and velocity fields in these regions. However, it is necessary a complete descrip…
Cosmic voids are progressively emerging as a new viable cosmological probe. Their abundance and density profiles are sensitive to modifications of gravity, as well as to dark energy and neutrinos. The main goal of this work is to investigate the possibility of exploiting cosmic void statistics to disentangle the degeneracies resulting from a proper combination of $f(R)$ modified gravity and neutrino mass. We use N-body simulations to analyse the density profiles and size function of voids traced by both dark matter particles and haloes. We find clear evidence of the enhancement of gravity in $…
We explore voids in dark matter and halo fields from simulations of $Λ$CDM and Hu-Sawicki $f(R)$ models. In $f(R)$ gravity, dark matter void abundances are greater than that of general relativity (GR). However, when using haloes to identify voids, the differences of void abundances become much smaller, but can still be told apart, in principle, at the 2, 6 and 14 $σ$ level for the $f(R)$ model parameter amplitudes of $|f_{R0}|=10^{-6}$, $10^{-5}$ and $10^{-4}$. In contrast, the abundance of large voids found using haloes in $f(R)$ gravity is lower than in GR. The more efficient halo formation …
We report on the first application of the Alcock-Paczynski test to stacked voids in spectroscopic galaxy redshift surveys.We use voids from the Sutter et al. (2012) void catalog, which was derived from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 main sample and luminous red galaxy catalogs. The construction of that void catalog removes potential shape measurement bias by using a modified version of the ZOBOV algorithm and by removing voids near survey boundaries and masks. We apply the shape-fitting procedure presented in Lavaux & Wandelt (2012) to ten void stacks out to redshift z=0.36. Combi…
We present catalogues of voids for the SDSS DR7 redshift survey and for Millennium I simulation mock data. We aim to compare the observations with simulations based on a $Λ$CDM model and a semi-analytic galaxy formation model. We use the void statistics as a test for these models. We assembled a mock catalogue that closely resembles the SDSS DR7 catalogue and carried out a parallel statistical analysis of the observed and simulated catalogue. We find that in the observation and the simulation, voids tend to be equally spherical. The total volume occupied by the voids and their total number are…
We study the two-point correlation function of density perturbations in a spherically symmetric void universe model which does not employ the Copernican principle. First we solve perturbation equations in the inhomogeneous universe model and obtain density fluctuations by using a method of non-linear perturbation theory which was adopted in our previous paper. From the obtained solutions, we calculate the two-point correlation function and show that it has a local anisotropy at the off-center position differently from those in homogeneous and isotropic universes. This anisotropy is caused by t…
The large-scale structure of the universe can only be observed via luminous tracers of the dark matter. However, the clustering statistics of tracers are biased and depend on various properties, such as their host-halo mass and assembly history. On very large scales this tracer bias results in a constant offset in the clustering amplitude, known as linear bias. Towards smaller nonlinear scales, this is no longer the case and tracer bias becomes a complicated function of scale and time. We focus on tracer bias centred on cosmic voids, depressions of the density field that spatially dominate the…
In this paper, we analysed the halos and voids properties of a GR-based N-body simulation carried out at redshifts z= 0.0 and z= 0.8 as differences between dynamical dark energy models (namely PL and CPL) with respect to LCDM. Analysing the halos demonstrates that both models, PL and CPL, behave like LCDM, despite the velocity dispersion of halos was more sensitive to the dynamical dark energy model. In addition, a void finder was developed to extract the properties of voids from simulated data. Further statistical model on voids confirms that the PL model produces larger voids. In summary, ou…
Primordial black holes forming during kination: the trapped, the overdense, and the void
International Centre for Theoretical Physics Asia-Pacific, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（国际理论物理中心亚太分馆，中国科学院大学）；Center for Theoretical Physics, School of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Hainan University（海南大学物理与电子工程学院理论物理中心）
A modification of the Press-Schechter theory allowing for presence of a background large-scale structure (LSS) - a supercluster or a void, is proposed. The LSS is accounted as the statistical constraints in form of linear functionals of the random overdensity field. The deviation of the background density within the LSS is interpreted in a pseudo-cosmological sense. Using the constraints formalism may help us to probe non-trivial spatial statistics of haloes, e.g. edge and shape effects on boundaries of the superclusters and voids. Parameters of the constraints are connected to features of the…
We use properties of void populations identified in N-body simulations to forecast the ability of upcoming galaxy surveys to differentiate models of f(R) gravity from ΛCDM cosmology. We analyze simulations designed to mimic the densities, volumes, and clustering statistics of upcoming surveys, using the public VIDE toolkit. We examine void abundances as a basic probe at redshifts 1.0 and 0.4. We find that stronger f(R) coupling strengths produce voids up to ~20% larger in radius, leading to a significant shift in the void number function. As an initial estimate of the constraining power of voi…
We perform a statistical study focused on void environments. We examine galaxy density profiles around voids in the SDSS, finding a correlation between void--centric distance to the shell of maximum density and void radius when a maximum in overdensity exists. We analyze voids with and without a surrounding over-dense shell in the SDSS. We find that small voids are more frequently surrounded by over-dense shells whereas the radial galaxy density profile of large voids tends to rise smoothly towards the mean galaxy density. We analyse the fraction of voids surrounded by overdense shells finding…
We investigate the basic properties of voids from high resolution, cosmological N-body simulations of Λ-dominated cold dark matter (ΛCDM) models, in order to compare with the analytical model of Sheth and van de Weygaert (SvdW) for void statistics. For the subsample of five dark matter simulations in the ΛCDM cosmology with box sizes ranging from 1000 Mpc/h to 8 Mpc/h, we find that the standard void-in-cloud effect is too simplified to explain several properties of identified small voids in simulations. (i) The number density of voids is found to be larger than the prediction of the analytical…
We study the distribution of cosmic voids and void galaxies using Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 (SDSS DR7). Using the VoidFinder algorithm as described by Hoyle 2002, we identify 1054 statistically significant voids in the northern galactic hemisphere with radii > 10 h^{-1} Mpc. The filling factor of voids in the sample volume is 62%. The largest void is just over 30 h^{-1} Mpc in effective radius. The median effective radius is 17 h^{-1} Mpc. The voids are found to be significantly underdense, with density contrast δ< -0.85 at the edges of the voids. The radial density profiles of t…
Taking N-body simulations with volumes and particle densities tuned to match the SDSS DR7 spectroscopic main sample, we assess the ability of current void catalogs (e.g., Sutter et al. 2012b) to distinguish a model of coupled dark matter-dark energy from ΛCDM cosmology using properties of cosmic voids. Identifying voids with the VIDE toolkit, we find no statistically significant differences in the ellipticities, but find that coupling produces a population of significantly larger voids, possibly explaining the recent result of Tavasoli et al. (2013). In addition, we use the universal density p…
