A Cosmic Void Catalog of SDSS DR12 BOSS Galaxies

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive catalog of cosmic voids identified in SDSS DR12 BOSS galaxies, including their properties, statistical analysis, and comparison with mock catalogs, to aid cosmological research.

Contribution

The paper introduces a large, quality-cut void catalog from SDSS DR12 BOSS data, with detailed statistical analysis and validation against mock catalogs, enhancing tools for cosmological studies.

Findings

Identified 1,228 high-quality cosmic voids with radii 20-100 Mpc/h.

Void properties agree well with mock catalog predictions.

No significant difference in galaxy stellar mass distribution inside and outside voids.

Abstract

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 20-100Mpc/h 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 significant difference. These BOSS and mock void catalogs are useful for a number of cosmological and galaxy environment studies.