The perspective of voids on rising cosmology tensions

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia “Augusto Righi” – Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Via Piero Gobetti 93/2, 40129 Bologna, Italy
e-mail: sofia.contarini3@unibo.it
² INFN – Sezione di Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat 6/2, 40127 Bologna, Italy
³ INAF – Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna, Via Piero Gobetti 93/3, 40129 Bologna, Italy
⁴ Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute, 162 5th Avenue, 10010 New York, NY, USA
⁵ The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, 41 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003, USA
⁶ Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Peyton Hall, Princeton University, 4 Ivy Lane, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
⁷ Universitäts-Sternwarte München, Fakultät für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Scheinerstrasse 1, 81679 München, Germany

Received: 26 July 2023
Accepted: 2 November 2023

Abstract

We investigate the main tensions within the current standard model of cosmology from the perspective of the main statistics of cosmic voids, using the final BOSS DR12 data set. For this purpose, we present the first estimate of the S₈ ≡ σ₈ Ω_m/0.3 and H₀ parameters obtained from void number counts and shape distortions. To analyze void counts we relied on an extension of the popular volume-conserving model for the void size function, tailored to the application on data, including geometric and dynamic distortions. We calibrated the two nuisance parameters of this model with the official BOSS Collaboration mock catalogs and propagated their uncertainty through the statistical analysis of the BOSS void number counts. The constraints from void shapes come from the study of the geometric distortions of the stacked void-galaxy cross-correlation function. In this work we focus our analysis on the Ω_m − σ₈ and Ω_m − H₀ parameter planes and derive the marginalized constraints S₈ = 0.813_−0.068^+0.093 and H₀ = 67.3_−9.1^+10.0 km s⁻¹ Mpc⁻¹, which are fully compatible with constraints from the literature. These results are expected to notably improve in precision when analyzed jointly with independent probes and will open a new viewing angle on the rising cosmological tensions in the near future.