Voids in the SDSS DR9: observations, simulations, and the impact of the
  survey mask
  We present and study cosmic voids identified using the watershed void finder
VIDE in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 9, compare these voids to
ones identified in mock catalogs, and assess the impact of the survey mask on
void statistics such as number functions, ellipticity distributions, and radial
density profiles. The nearly 1,000 identified voids span three nearly
volume-limited samples from redshift z = 0.43 to 0.7. For comparison we use 98
of the publicly available 2LPT-based mock galaxy catalogs of Manera et al., and
also generate our own mock catalogs by applying a Halo Occupation Distribution
model to an N-body simulation. We find that the mask reduces the number density
of voids at all scales by a factor of three and slightly skews the relative
size distributions. This engenders an increase in the mean ellipticity by
roughly 30%. However, we find that radial density profiles are largely robust
to the effects of the mask. We see excellent agreement between the data and
both mock catalogs, and find no tension between the observed void properties
and the properties derived from {\Lambda}CDM simulations. We have added the
void catalogs from both data and mock galaxy populations discussed in this work
to the Public Cosmic Void Catalog at http://www.cosmicvoids.net.
