Bibcode
Patiri, S. G.; Betancort-Rijo, J. E.; Prada, F.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 368, Issue 3, pp. 1132-1144.
Advertised on:
5
2006
Citations
25
Refereed citations
24
Description
We present a general analytical procedure for computing the number
density of voids with radius above a given value within the context of
gravitational formation of the large-scale structure of the Universe out
of Gaussian initial conditions. To this end, we develop an accurate
(under generally satisfied conditions) extension of the unconditional
mass function to constrained environments, which allows us both to
obtain the number density of collapsed objects of certain mass at any
distance from the centre of the void, and to derive the number density
of voids defined by collapsed objects. We have made detailed
calculations for the spherically averaged mass density and halo number
density profiles for particular voids. We also present a formal
expression for the number density of voids defined by galaxies of a
given type and luminosity. This expression contains the probability for
a collapsed object of certain mass to host a galaxy of that type and
luminosity (i.e. the conditional luminosity function) as a function of
the environmental density. We propose a procedure to infer this
function, which may provide useful clues as to the galaxy formation
process, from the observed void densities.