First investigation of void statistics in numerical relativity simulations

TL;DR

This paper investigates void statistics in cosmological simulations using numerical relativity, providing new insights into void dynamics and properties without relying on Newtonian approximations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel watershed void finder for fluid-based NR simulations and compares void properties with empirical profiles, highlighting relativistic effects.

Findings

Void regions expand 10-30% faster than average.

Spatial curvature in void centers reaches 60-80%.

Void statistics are consistent with Newtonian simulations where comparable.

Abstract

We apply and extend standard tools for void statistics to cosmological simulations that solve Einstein's equations with numerical relativity (NR). We obtain a simulated void catalogue without Newtonian approximations, using a new watershed void finder which operates on fluid-based NR simulations produced with the Einstein Toolkit. We compare and contrast measures of void size and void fraction, and compare radial stacked density profiles to empirically-derived Hamaus-Sutter-Wandelt (HSW) density profiles and profiles based on distance to void boundaries. We recover statistics roughly consistent with Newtonian N-body simulations where such a comparison is meaningful. We study variation of dynamical spatial curvature and local expansion explicitly demonstrating the spatial fluctuations of these quantities in void regions. We find that voids in our simulations expand ~10-30% faster than the global average and the spatial curvature density parameter in the centre of voids reaches ~60-80%.