Answers from the Void: VIDE and its Applications

We discuss various applications ofvide, the Void IDentification and Examination toolkit, anopen-source Python/C++ code for finding cosmic voids in galaxy redshift surveysand $N$-body simulations.Based on a substantially enhanced version of ZOBOV, vide not only finds voids, but alsosummarizes their properties, extracts statisticalinformation, and providesa Python-based platform for more detailed analysis, such asmanipulating void catalogs and particle members, filtering, plotting,computing clustering statistics, stacking, comparing catalogs, andfitting density profiles.vide also provides significant additional functionality forpre-processing inputs: for example, vide can work with volume- ormagnitude-limited galaxy samples with arbitrary survey geometries,or darkmatter particles or halo catalogs in a variety of common formats.It can also randomly subsample inputsand includes a Halo Occupation Distribution model forconstructing mock galaxy populations.vide has been used for a wide variety of applications, fromdiscovering a universal density profile to estimatingprimordial magnetic fields, andis publicly available athttp://bitbucket.org/cosmicvoids/vide\_publicandhttp://www.cosmicvoids.net.