The imprint of cosmic voids from the DESI Legacy Survey DR9 Luminous Red Galaxies in the Planck 2018 lensing map through spectroscopically calibrated mocks

¹ Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS/IN2P3, CPPM, Marseille, France
² MTA-CSFK Lendület “Momentum” Large-Scale Structure (LSS) Research Group, 1121 Konkoly Thege Miklós út 15-17, Budapest, Hungary
³ Konkoly Observatory, HUN-REN CSFK, MTA Centre of Excellence, Budapest, Konkoly Thege Miklós út 15-17 H-1121, Hungary
⁴ Brookhaven National Laboratory, Physics Department, Upton, NY 11973, USA
⁵ Physics Dept., Boston University, 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA
⁶ Dipartimento di Fisica “Aldo Pontremoli”, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Celoria 16, I-20133 Milano, Italy
⁷ Department of Physics & Astronomy, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK
⁸ IRFU, CEA, Université Paris-Saclay, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
⁹ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
¹⁰ Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Circuito de la Investigación Científica, Ciudad Universitaria, Cd. de México C. P. 04510, Mexico
¹¹ Departamento de Física, Universidad de los Andes, Cra. 1 No. 18A-10, Edificio Ip, CP 111711 Bogotá, Colombia
¹² Observatorio Astronómico, Universidad de los Andes, Cra. 1 No. 18A-10, Edificio H, CP 111711 Bogotá, Colombia
¹³ Instituto de Fisica Teorica IFT-UAM/CSIC, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain
¹⁴ Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, PO Box 500 Batavia, IL 60510, USA
¹⁵ Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics, The Ohio State University, 191 West Woodruff Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
¹⁶ Department of Physics, The Ohio State University, 191 West Woodruff Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
¹⁷ The Ohio State University, Columbus, 43210 OH, USA
¹⁸ Department of Physics, Southern Methodist University, 3215 Daniel Avenue, Dallas, TX 75275, USA
¹⁹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine 92697, USA
²⁰ NSF NOIRLab, 950 N. Cherry Ave., Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
²¹ Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, Passeig de Lluís Companys, 23, 08010 Barcelona, Spain
²² Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra Barcelona, Spain
²³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Siena College, 515 Loudon Road, Loudonville, NY 12211, USA
²⁴ Department of Physics & Astronomy and Pittsburgh Particle Physics, Astrophysics, and Cosmology Center (PITT PACC), University of Pittsburgh, 3941 O’Hara Street, Pitts- burgh, PA 15260, USA
²⁵ Departament de Física, EEBE, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, c/Eduard Maristany 10, 08930 Barcelona, Spain
²⁶ Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC), Glorieta de la Astronomía, s/n, E-18008 Granada, Spain
²⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Sejong University, Seoul 143-747, Korea
²⁸ CIEMAT, Avenida Complutense 40, E-28040 Madrid, Spain
²⁹ University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA

^⋆ Corresponding author.

Received: 20 December 2024
Accepted: 14 April 2025

Abstract

The cross-correlation of cosmic voids with the lensing convergence (κ) map of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) fluctuations provides a powerful tool to refine our understanding of the current cosmological model. However, several studies have reported a moderate tension (up to ∼2σ) between the lensing imprint of cosmic voids on the observed CMB and the ΛCDM signal predicted by simulations. To address this “lensing-is-low” tension and to obtain new, precise measurements of the signal, we exploit the large DESI Legacy Survey Luminous Red Galaxy (LRG) data set, covering approximately 19 500 deg² of the sky and including about 10 million LRGs at z < 1.05. Our ΛCDM template was created using the Buzzard mocks, which we specifically calibrated to match the clustering properties of the observed galaxy sample by exploiting more than one million DESI spectra. We identified our catalogs of 3D voids in the range 0.35 < z < 0.95 and cross-correlated them through a stacking methodology, dividing the sample into bins according to the redshift and λ_v values of the voids. For the full void sample, we report a 14σ detection of the lensing signal, with A_κ = 1.016 ± 0.054, which increases to 17σ when considering the void-in-void (A_κ = 0.944 ± 0.064) and the void-in-cloud (A_κ = 0.975 ± 0.060) populations individually, the highest detection significance for studies of this kind. We observe a full agreement between observations and ΛCDM mocks across all redshift bins, sky regions, and void populations considered. In addition to these findings, our analysis highlights the importance of accurately matching sparseness and redshift error distributions between mocks and observations, as well as the role of λ_v in enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio through void population discrimination.