2004/09/30 by Joerg M. Colberg, J. M. Colberg, Ravi K. Sheth +3 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #COSMIC cancer database #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark energy #Dark matter #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Maxima and minima #Physics #RADIUS #Redshift #Universe #Void (composites) #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2005.09064.x
published as Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 360 (2005) 216-226 · 12 pages, 16 figures, submitted to MNRAS; 13 pages, 17 figures, revised version, accepted for publication
arxiv created 2005/04/05 · openalex publication_date 2005/06/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study the formation and evolution of voids in the dark matter distribution using various simulations of the popular Λ cold dark matter cosmogony. We identify voids by requiring them to be regions of space with a mean overdensity of −0.8 or less – roughly the equivalent of using a spherical overdensity group finder for haloes. Each of the simulations contains thousands of voids. The distribution of void sizes in the different simulations shows good agreement when differences in particle and grid resolution are accounted for. Voids very clearly correspond to minima in the smoothed initial density field. Apart from a very weak dependence on the mass resolution, the rescaled mass profiles of voids in the different simulations agree remarkably well. We find a universal void mass profile of the form ρ(<r)/ρ(reff) ∝ exp[(r/reff)α], where reff is the effective radius of a void and α∼ 2. The mass function of haloes in voids is steeper than that of haloes that populate denser regions. In addition, the abundances of void haloes seem to evolve somewhat more strongly between redshifts ∼1 and 0 than the global abundances of haloes.