Clustering and Bias Measurements of SDSS Voids

Abstract

Using a void catalog from the SDSS survey, we present the first measurements of void clustering and the corresponding void bias. Over the range 30-200 Mpc/h the void auto-correlation is detected at 5-sigma significance for voids of radius 15-20 Mpc/h. We also measure the void-galaxy cross-correlation at higher signal-to-noise and compare the inferred void bias with the autocorrelation results. Void bias is constant with scale for voids of a given size, but its value falls from 5.6 +/- 1.0 to below zero as the void radius increases from 15 to 30 Mpc/h. The comparison of our measurements with carefully matched galaxy mock catalogs, with no free parameters related to the voids, shows that model predictions can be reliably made for void correlations. We study the dependence of void bias on tracer density and void size with a view to future applications. In combination with our previous lensing measurements of void mass profiles, these clustering measurements provide another step towards using voids as cosmological tracers.

matches MNRAS accepted version; added treatment of void volume overlap and other minor changes; 8 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (11)

• The Eleventh and Twelfth Data Releases of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Final Data from SDSS-III
• Probing cosmology and gravity with redshift-space distortions around voids
• Weak lensing by voids in modified lensing potentials
• Large-Scale Clustering of Cosmic Voids
• Cosmic voids in coupled dark energy cosmologies: the impact of halo bias
• The nature of voids: II. Tracing underdensities with biased galaxies
• Self-similarity and universality of void density profiles in simulation and SDSS data
• Voids in Modified Gravity Reloaded: Eulerian Void Assignment
• Testing cosmic geometry without dynamic distortions using voids
• The life and death of cosmic voids
• The sparkling Universe: the coherent motions of cosmic voids

Cited by in corpus (30)

• Constraints on Cosmology and Gravity from the Dynamics of Voids
• Massive Neutrinos Leave Fingerprints on Cosmic Voids
• Cosmic Voids and Void Lensing in the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification Data
• Simulating nonlinear cosmological structure formation with massive neutrinos
• Assessment of the Information Content of the Power Spectrum and Bispectrum
• The Novel Probes Project -- Tests of Gravity on Astrophysical Scales
• The bias of cosmic voids in the presence of massive neutrinos
• The GIGANTES dataset: precision cosmology from voids in the machine learning era
• On the linearity of tracer bias around voids
• Signatures of the Primordial Universe from Its Emptiness: Measurement of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from Minima of the Density Field
• Void Lensing as a Test of Gravity
• Cosmological constraints from the BOSS DR12 void size function
• Cluster-Void Degeneracy Breaking: Dark Energy, Planck and the Largest Cluster & Void
• On the relative bias of void tracers in the Dark Energy Survey
• Constraints on the growth of structure around cosmic voids in eBOSS DR14
• Weak lensing by voids in weak lensing maps
• Measuring Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from the clustering of voids
• Constraint of Void Bias on Primordial non-Gaussianity
• DIVE in the cosmic web: voids with Delaunay Triangulation from discrete matter tracer distributions
• Probing Galaxy Assembly Bias in BOSS Galaxies Using Void Probabilities
• The clustering of critical points in the evolving cosmic web
• Volume Statistics as a Probe of Large-Scale Structure
• Measurement of Void Bias Using Separate Universe Simulations
• The sparkling Universe: Clustering of voids and void clumps
• Separate Universe Void Bias
• Void Galaxy Distribution: A Challenge for $\Lambda$CDM
• Intrinsic alignments of galaxies around cosmic voids
• The galaxy bias profile of cosmic voids
• VEGA: Voids idEntification using Genetic Algorithm
• Cosmic voids and BAO with relative baryon-CDM perturbations