The life and death of cosmic voids
  We investigate the formation, growth, merger history, movement, and
destruction of cosmic voids detected via the watershed transform code VIDE in a
cosmological N-body dark matter {\Lambda}CDM simulation. By adapting a method
used to construct halo merger trees, we are able to trace individual voids back
to their initial appearance and record the merging and evolution of their
progenitors at high redshift. For the scales of void sizes captured in our
simulation, we find that the void formation rate peaks at scale factor 0.3,
which coincides with a growth in the void hierarchy and the emergence of dark
energy. Voids of all sizes appear at all scale factors, though the median
initial void size decreases with time. When voids become detectable they have
nearly their present-day volumes. Almost all voids have relatively stable
growth rates and suffer only infrequent minor mergers. Dissolution of a void
via merging is very rare. Instead, most voids maintain their distinct identity
as annexed subvoids of a larger parent. The smallest voids are collapsing at
the present epoch, but void destruction ceases after scale factor 0.3. In
addition, voids centers tend to move very little, less than 0.01 of their
effective radii per ln a, over their lifetimes. Overall, most voids exhibit
little radical dynamical evolution; their quiet lives make them pristine probes
of cosmological initial conditions and the imprint of dark energy.
