English

A spherical hydrodynamical model of cosmic voids in {\Lambda}CDM and beyond

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2026-02-23 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

Cosmic voids have emerged as powerful probes for cosmology, providing complementary information on the large-scale structure of the universe. We present the first application of a hydrodynamical framework to model the evolution of cosmic voids. This approach offers a physically intuitive characterization of void dynamics and can naturally be applied to non-standard cosmologies. We derive the cosmology-dependent mapping that relates the linear (Lagrangian) and fully non-linear (Eulerian) evolution of the matter density contrast, a central component for accurate theoretical modeling of void statistics. Furthermore, we present a new method for determining the shell-crossing epoch across arbitrary cosmological backgrounds, thereby extending previous treatments restricted to the Einstein-de Sitter universe. Motivated by recent DESI results hinting at dynamical dark energy, we investigate void evolution in w0wa w_0w_aCDM cosmologies by varying w0 w_0 and waw_a. We also consider the impact of varying the matter density parameter, Ωm,0 \Omega_{\mathrm{m},0}. We find that the evolution of isolated, spherically symmetric cosmic voids is most sensitive to Ωm,0 \Omega_{\mathrm{m},0} and w0 w_0 , which can alter the non-linear density contrast by up to 20-30%. Variations in waw_a have a smaller impact, but may still lead to measurable effects. We also show that the cosmology-dependent mapping between linear and non-linear density contrasts may provide a sensitive probe of dynamical dark energy in precision void analyses.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.14120,
  title  = {A spherical hydrodynamical model of cosmic voids in {\Lambda}CDM and beyond},
  author = {Tommaso Moretti and Giovanni Verza and Noemi Frusciante and Francesco Pace},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.14120},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

42 pages, 17 figures. This version matches the published one

R2 v1 2026-07-01T04:08:17.534Z