Mastering the effects of peculiar velocities in cosmic voids

Understand

How do peculiar velocities affect observed voids? To answer this question we use the VIDE toolkit to identify voids in mock galaxy populations embedded within an N-body simulation both with and without peculiar velocities included.

• We compare the resulting void populations to assess the impact on void properties.
• We find that void abundances and spherically-averaged radial density profiles are mildly affected by peculiar velocities.
• However, peculiar velocities can distort by up to 10% the shapes for a particular subset of voids depending on the void size and density contrast, which can lead to increased variance in Alcock-Paczy\'nski test.