A First Application of the Alcock-Paczynski Test to Stacked Cosmic Voids

Sutter, P. M.; Lavaux, Guilhem; Wandelt, B. D.; Weinberg, David H.

doi:10.1088/0004-637x/761/2/187

Cited by 171 publications

(314 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Assuming statistical errors only, Lavaux and Wandelt (2012) estimate that a void-based AP constraint from a Euclid-like redshift survey would provide several times better dark energy constraints than the BAO measurement from the same data set, mainly because the scale of voids is so much smaller than the BAO scale. Sutter et al (2012) have recently applied the AP test to a void catalog constructed from the SDSS DR7 redshift surveys, though with this sample the statistical errors are too large to yield a significant detection of the predicted effect.…”

Section: The Alcock-paczynski Testmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observational probes of cosmic acceleration

et al. 2013

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The accelerating expansion of the universe is the most surprising cosmological discovery in many decades, implying that the universe is dominated by some form of "dark energy" with exotic physical properties, or that Einstein's theory of gravity breaks down on cosmological scales. The profound implications of cosmic acceleration have inspired ambitious efforts to understand its origin, with experiments that aim to measure the history of expansion and growth of structure with percent-level precision or higher. We review in detail the four most well established methods for making such measurements: Type Ia supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), weak gravitational lensing, and the abundance of galaxy clusters. We pay particular attention to the systematic uncertainties in these techniques and to strategies for controlling them at the level needed to exploit "Stage IV" dark energy facilities such as BigBOSS, LSST, Euclid, and WFIRST. We briefly review a number of other approaches including redshift-space distortions, the Alcock-Paczynski effect, and direct measurements of the Hubble constant H 0 . We present extensive forecasts for constraints on the dark energy equation of state and parameterized deviations from General Relativity, achievable with Stage III and Stage IV experimental programs that incorporate supernovae, BAO, weak lensing, and cosmic microwave background data. We also show the level of precision required for clusters or other methods to provide constraints competitive with those of these fiducial programs. We emphasize the value of a balanced program that employs several of the most powerful methods in combination, both to cross-check systematic uncertainties and to take advantage of complementary information. Surveys to probe cosmic acceleration produce data sets that support a wide range of scientific investigations, and they continue the longstanding astronomical tradition of mapping the universe in ever greater detail over ever larger scales.

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Section: The Alcock-paczynski Testmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observational probes of cosmic acceleration

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“…One of the most promising applications for cosmology is to exploit void ellipticities (Lavaux & Wandelt 2010;Sutter et al 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Perhaps their most common and effective cosmological application is through the so-called Alcock-Paczynski (AP) test (Alcock & Paczynski 1979), in which one measures the size of the stacked void along and across the line of sight and looks for a possible mismatch that would arise from assuming an incorrect cosmological model (Sutter et al 2012. The accuracy of the AP test has been discussed in comparison to that of other cosmological tests by .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The accuracy of the AP test has been discussed in comparison to that of other cosmological tests by . The first application of the method by Sutter et al (2012) considered voids extracted from the SDSS DR-7 galaxy survey (Abazajian et al 2009) using a modified version of the ZOnes Bordering On Voidness (ZOBOV) algorithm (Neyrinck 2008). With 10 stacked voids detected out to z = 0.36 they failed to detect any significant distortions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cosmic voids detection without density measurements

Elyiv

Marulli

Pollina

et al. 2015

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Cosmic voids are effective cosmological probes to discriminate among competing world models. Their identification is generally based on density or geometry criteria that, because of their very nature, are prone to shot noise. We propose two void finders that are based on dynamical criterion to select voids in Lagrangian coordinates and minimise the impact of sparse sampling. The first approach exploits the Zel'dovich approximation to trace back in time the orbits of galaxies located in voids and their surroundings, the second uses the observed galaxy-galaxy correlation function to relax the objects' spatial distribution to homogeneity and isotropy. In both cases voids are defined as regions of the negative velocity divergence, that can be regarded as sinks of the back-in-time streamlines of the mass tracers. To assess the performance of our methods we used a dark matter halo mock catalogue CoDECS, and compared the results with those obtained with the ZOBOV void finder. We find that the void divergence profiles are less scattered than the density ones and, therefore, their stacking constitutes a more accurate cosmological probe. The significance of the divergence signal in the central part of voids obtained from both our finders is 60% higher than for overdensity profiles in the ZOBOV case. The ellipticity of the stacked void measured in the divergence field is closer to unity, as expected, than what is found when using halo positions. Therefore our void finders are complementary to the existing methods, that should contribute to improve the accuracy of void-based cosmological tests.

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“…The size and shape distribution of voids, their intrinsic structure, and their counts can provide insights into the growth of structure (Jennings et al 2013) and dark energy (Lee & Park 2009;Biswas et al 2010;Bos et al 2012;Pisani et al 2015). Moreover, the Alcock-Paczyński test (Alcock & Paczynski 1979) can be applied to "stacked" voids to probe the expansion history of the universe (Ryden 1995;Lavaux & Wandelt 2012;Sutter et al 2012a). Voids can also be correlated with the cosmic microwave background (Bennett et al 2013) to study the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect (Thompson & Vishniac 1987;Granett et al 2008;Planck Collaboration et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Cosmic Void Catalog of SDSS DR12 BOSS Galaxies

Mao

Berlind

Scherrer

et al. 2017

ApJ

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We present a cosmic void catalog using the large-scale structure galaxy catalog from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). This galaxy catalog is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 12 and is the final catalog of SDSS-III. We take into account the survey boundaries, masks, and angular and radial selection functions, and apply the ZOBOV void finding algorithm to the Galaxy catalog. We identify a total of 10,643 voids. After making quality cuts to ensure that the voids represent real underdense regions, we obtain 1,228 voids with effective radii spanning the range 20-100 -h Mpc 1 and with central densities that are, on average, 30% of the mean sample density. We release versions of the catalogs both with and without quality cuts. We discuss the basic statistics of voids, such as their size and redshift distributions, and measure the radial density profile of the voids via a stacking technique. In addition, we construct mock void catalogs from 1000 mock galaxy catalogs, and find that the properties of BOSS voids are in good agreement with those in the mock catalogs. We compare the stellar mass distribution of galaxies living inside and outside of the voids, and find no large difference. These BOSS and mock void catalogs are useful for a number of cosmological and galaxy environment studies.

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A First Application of the Alcock-Paczynski Test to Stacked Cosmic Voids

Cited by 171 publications

References 55 publications

Observational probes of cosmic acceleration

Observational probes of cosmic acceleration

Cosmic voids detection without density measurements

A Cosmic Void Catalog of SDSS DR12 BOSS Galaxies

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