Extension and optimization of the “Popcorn Void Finder” algorithm for its application to real cosmological surveys

Abstract

Cosmic voids are vast underdense regions in space, constituting the largest observational structures in the Universe. As such, they encode key information about the geometry and the accelerated expansion of the Universe, which is why they are an object of interest to Cosmology. In this sense, Popcorn Void Finder (PVF) is an algorithm designed to identify such voids which presents itself in two flavours: spheric and popcorn. PVF was initially developed on cosmological simulations, thus allowing one to ignore the systematic effects present in real astronomical catalogs. In this proposal we adress the adaptation of PVF’s spherical phase for use in observational catalogs, taking good engineering practices into consideration in a context of high quality, performance and availability of software requirements.