Welcome to the Public Cosmic Void Catalog

This is the repository for the public releases of a comprehensive cosmic void catalog from galaxy redshift surveys and simulations. This catalog is the product of a collaboration of P.M. Sutter (IAP/OSU), Benjamin Wandelt (IAP/UPMC/Illinois), Guilhem Lavaux (Perimeter), and David Weinberg (OSU), with contributions from Nico Hamaus (IAP) and Alice Pisani (IAP). Our void finder algorithm is based on ZOBOV, which uses Voronoi tessellations and the watershed transform to identify voids. See here for the journal article describing our method used for defining and cataloging voids. 

You can download the latest version of VIDE, our void finding code, here.
 
Pictures of the make-your-own clay cosmic webs from the public event at COSI can be found here. 

Catalog at a Glance:

The catalog contains all the information required to reproduce the journal article. This means that the catalog contains the raw ZOBOV-generated catalog and all derived data products, such as:
  • Void barycenters, redshifts, effective radii, and redshifts
  • Locations of member galaxies
  • One-dimensional radial profiles of stacked voids
  • Two-dimensional projections of stacked voids
  • Redshift-dependent void number counts
  • Void size distributions

Catalog Objectives

The primary purpose of this catalog is to promote collaborative void science. This includes research into the nature of voids and their use as astrophysical and cosmological probes. Potential topics include:  
  • The Alcock-Paczynski test
  • Size distributions
  • Ellipticity distributions
  • integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect
  • Fifth forces and f(R) gravity
  • Large-scale anistropies
  • Weak lensing anti-shear
  • Cosmological magnetic fields
  • Environmental dependence of galaxy metallicities

Have new void science ideas or interested in collaborating with us to gain access to pre-release catalogs and mock data sets? Just contact us!

PMS and BDW acknowledge support from NSF Grant AST-0908902. GL acknowledges support from CITA National Fellowship and financial support from the Government of Canada Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship. Research at Perimeter Institute is supported by the Government of Canada through Industry Canada and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Research and Innovation.