Baryon effects on void statistics in the EAGLE simulation

Abstract

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 $\mathrm{\Lambda }$ cold dark matter Universe with state-of-the-art subgrid models for baryonic processes in a $(100\mathrm{cMpc}{)}^3$ volume. We study the effect of baryons on void statistics by comparing results with DM-only simulations that use the same initial conditions as EAGLE. When identifying voids in the mass field, we find that a DM-only simulation produces 24 per cent more voids than a hydrodynamical one due to the action of galaxy feedback polluting void regions with hot gas, specially for small voids with $r_{\mathrm{void}}\le 10\mathrm{Mpc}$. We find that the way in which galaxy tracers are selected has a strong impact on the inferred void properties. Voids identified using galaxies selected by their stellar mass are larger and have cuspier density profiles than those identified by galaxies selected by their total mass. Overall, baryons have minimal effects on void statistics, as void properties are well captured by DM-only simulations, but it is important to account for how galaxies populate DM haloes to estimate the observational effect of different cosmological models on the statistics of voids.

Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 21 pages, 16 figures

References in corpus (19)

• The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments
• Introducing the Illustris Project: Simulating the coevolution of dark and visible matter in the Universe
• The EAGLE simulations of galaxy formation: calibration of subgrid physics and model variations
• The effect of photo-ionization on the cooling rates of enriched, astrophysical plasmas
• Chemical enrichment in cosmological, smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations
• Baryon effects on the internal structure of LCDM halos in the EAGLE simulations
• ZOBOV: a parameter-free void-finding algorithm
• Inviscid SPH
• f(R) Gravity and Chameleon Theories
• Bent by baryons: the low mass galaxy-halo relation
• The Aspen--Amsterdam Void Finder Comparison Project
• The darkness that shaped the void: dark energy and cosmic voids
• Supermassive black holes in the EAGLE Universe. Revealing the observables of their growth
• Cosmic Voids and Void Lensing in the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification Data
• The effect of baryons on redshift space distortions and cosmic density and velocity fields in the EAGLE simulation
• A measurement of the Alcock-Paczynski effect using cosmic voids in the SDSS
• The orientation of galaxy dark matter haloes around cosmic voids
• Testing the imprint of non-standard cosmologies on void profiles using Monte Carlo random walks
• Testing the spherical evolution of cosmic voids

Cited by in corpus (26)

• Large-scale dark matter simulations
• The Santiago-Harvard-Edinburgh-Durham void comparison I: SHEDding light on chameleon gravity tests
• Detecting Neutrino Mass by Combining Matter Clustering, Halos, and Voids
• Precision cosmology with voids in the final BOSS data
• Testing the theory of gravity with DESI: estimators, predictions and simulation requirements
• How baryons affect halos and large-scale structure: a unified picture from the Simba simulation
• The Santiago-Harvard-Edinburgh-Durham void comparison II: unveiling the Vainshtein screening using weak lensing
• Redshift-space distortions with split densities
• Dark Energy Survey Year 1 results: The relationship between mass and light around cosmic voids
• Cosmic voids: a novel probe to shed light on our Universe
• Interpreting deep learning models for weak lensing
• A machine learning approach to mapping baryons onto dark matter haloes using the EAGLE and C-EAGLE simulations
• Weak Lensing Minima and Peaks: Cosmological Constraints and the Impact of Baryons
• Revealing the properties of void galaxies and their assembly using the EAGLE simulation
• The void halo mass function: a promising probe of neutrino mass
• An improved model of redshift-space distortions around voids: application to quintessence dark energy
• The CAVITY project. The spatially resolved stellar population properties of galaxies in voids
• Hierarchical structure of the cosmic web and galaxy properties
• Super-sample covariance of the power spectrum, bispectrum, halos, voids, and their cross covariances
• Optimal void finders in weak lensing maps
• Cosmic Voids in Evolving Dark Sector Cosmologies: the High Redshift Universe
• Imprints of the cosmic void evolution on the baryon processes inside galaxy haloes
• Cosmological Inference with Cosmic Voids and Neural Network Emulators
• The Impact of Baryons on the Large-Scale Structure of the Universe
• Hidden Figures in the Sky: Evolution of low-surface brightness galaxies from a hydro-dynamical perspective
• Mapping luminous and dark matter in the Universe