Alignment of galaxy spins in the vicinity of voids

TL;DR

This study investigates whether galaxy spins near cosmic voids align with the void centers and finds no significant evidence for such alignment, challenging previous claims.

Contribution

It provides new limits on galaxy spin alignment near voids using SDSS data and a spherical void finder, contrasting prior positive detections.

Findings

No statistical evidence for galaxy spin alignment near voids

Upper limits on alignment parameter c are c<0.11 at 95% confidence

Results challenge previous reports of galaxy-void alignments

Abstract

We provide limits on the alignment of galaxy orientations with the direction to the void center for galaxies lying near the edges of voids. We locate spherical voids in volume limited samples of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using the HB inspired void finder and investigate the orientation of (color selected) spiral galaxies that are nearly edge-on or face-on. In contrast with previous literature, we find no statistical evidence for departure from random orientations. Expressed in terms of the parameter c, introduced by Lee & Pen to describe the strength of such an alignment, we find that c<0.11(0.13) at 95% (99.7%) confidence limit within a context of a toy model that assumes a perfectly spherical voids with sharp boundaries.