No Arabic abstract
We develop a method to identify cosmic voids from the matter density field by adopting a physically-motivated concept that voids are the counterpart of massive clusters. To prove the concept we use a pair of $Lambda$CDM simulations, a reference and its initial density-inverted mirror simulation, and study the relation between the effective size of voids and the mass of corresponding clusters. Galaxy cluster-scale dark matter halos are identified in the Mirror simulation at $z=0$ by linking dark matter particles. The void corresponding to each cluster is defined in the Reference simulation as the region occupied by the member particles of the cluster. We study the voids corresponding to the halos more massive than $10^{13}h^{-1}M_{odot}$. We find a power-law scaling relation between the void size and the corresponding cluster mass. Voids with corresponding cluster mass above $10^{15}h^{-1}M_{odot}$ occupy $sim1%$ of the total simulated volume, whereas this fraction increases to $sim54%$ for voids with corresponding cluster mass above $10^{13}h^{-1}M_{odot}$. It is also found that the density profile of the identified voids follows a universal functional form. Based on these findings, we propose a method to identify cluster-counterpart voids directly from the matter density field without their mirror information by utilizing three parameters such as the smoothing scale, density threshold, and minimum core fraction. We recover voids corresponding to clusters more massive than $3times10^{14}h^{-1}M_{odot}$ at 70--74 % level of completeness and reliability. Our results suggest that we are able to identify voids in a way to associate them with clusters of a particular mass-scale.
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 massive, highly biased, halos are used as tracers, we find the opposite effect. The scale at which voids cluster, as well as the void correlation, is similarly sensitive to the sum of neutrino masses and the tracers. This scale dependent trend is not due to simulation volume or halo density. The interplay of these signatures in the void abundance and clustering leaves a distinct fingerprint that could be detected with observations and potentially help break degeneracies between different cosmological parameters. This paper paves the way to exploit cosmic voids in future surveys to constrain the mass of neutrinos.
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 $f(R)$ cosmologies in the void density profiles at $z=1$. However, these effects can be almost completely overridden by the presence of massive neutrinos because of their thermal free-streaming. Despite the limited volume of the analysed simulations does not allow us to achieve a statistically relevant abundance of voids larger than $40 mathrm{Mpc}/h$, we find that the void size function at high redshifts and for large voids is potentially an effective probe to disentangle these degenerate cosmological models, which is key in the prospective of the upcoming wide field redshift surveys.
Cosmic voids offer an extraordinary opportunity to study the effects of massive neutrinos on cosmological scales. Because they are freely streaming, neutrinos can penetrate the interior of voids more easily than cold dark matter or baryons, which makes their relative contribution to the mass budget in voids much higher than elsewhere in the Universe. In simulations it has recently been shown how various characteristics of voids in the matter distribution are affected by neutrinos, such as their abundance, density profiles, dynamics, and clustering properties. However, the tracers used to identify voids in observations (e.g., galaxies or halos) are affected by neutrinos as well, and isolating the unique neutrino signatures inherent to voids becomes more difficult. In this paper we make use of the DEMNUni suite of simulations to investigate the clustering bias of voids in Fourier space as a function of their core density and compensation. We find a clear dependence on the sum of neutrino masses that remains significant even for void statistics extracted from halos. In particular, we observe that the amplitude of the linear void bias increases with neutrino mass for voids defined in dark matter, whereas this trend gets reversed and slightly attenuated when measuring the relative void-halo bias using voids identified in the halo distribution. Finally, we argue how the original behaviour can be restored when considering observations of the total matter distribution (e.g. via weak lensing), and comment on scale-dependent effects in the void bias that may provide additional information on neutrinos in the future.
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 reproduce the clustering properties observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) II Data Release 7. We focus on the impact of massive neutrinos on the following void statistical properties: number density, ellipticities, two-point statistics, density and velocity profiles. Considering the matter density field, we find that voids in massive neutrino cosmologies are less evolved than those in the corresponding massless neutrinos case: there is a larger number of small voids and a smaller number of large ones, their profiles are less evacuated, and they present a lower wall at the edge. Moreover, the degeneracy between $sigma_8$ and $Omega_{ u}$ is broken when looking at void properties. In terms of the galaxy density field, we find that differences among cosmologies are difficult to detect because of the small number of galaxy voids in the simulations. Differences are instead present when looking at the matter density and velocity profiles around these voids.
We explore voids in dark matter and halo fields from simulations of $Lambda$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 $sigma$ 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 in underdense regions makes $f(R)$ voids less empty of haloes. This counter intuitive result suggests that voids are not necessarily emptier in $f(R)$ if one looks at galaxies in voids. Indeed, the halo number density profiles of voids are not distinguishable from GR. However, the same $f(R)$ voids are more empty of dark matter. This can in principle be observed by weak gravitational lensing of voids, for which the combination of a spec-$z$ and a photo-$z$ survey over the same sky is necessary. For a volume of 1~(Gpc/$h$)$^3$, neglecting the lensing shape noise, $|f_{R0}|=10^{-5}$ and $10^{-4}$ may be distinguished from GR using the lensing tangential shear signal around voids by 4 and 8$sigma$. The line-of-sight projection of large-scale structure is the main systematics that limits the significance of this signal, limiting the constraining power for $|f_{R0}|=10^{-6}$. The halo void abundance being smaller and the steepening of dark matter void profiles in $f(R)$ models are unique features that can be combined to break the degeneracy between $|f_{R0}|$ and $sigma_8$. The outflow of mass from void centers and velocity dispersions are greater in $f(R)$. Model differences in velocity profiles imply potential powerful constraints of the model in phase space and in redshift space.