arXiv · 1411.1074
Cosmological implications of baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements
Abstract
We derive constraints on cosmological parameters and tests of dark energy models from the combination of baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements with cosmic microwave background (CMB) and Type Ia supernova (SN) data. We take advantage of high-precision BAO measurements from galaxy clustering and the Ly-alpha forest (LyaF) in the BOSS survey of SDSS-III. BAO data alone yield a high confidence detection of dark energy, and in combination with the CMB angular acoustic scale they further imply a nearly flat universe. Combining BAO and SN data into an "inverse distance ladder" yields a 1.7% measurement of $H_0=67.3 \pm1.1$ km/s/Mpc. This measurement assumes standard pre-recombination physics but is insensitive to assumptions about dark energy or space curvature, so agreement with CMB-based estimates that assume a flat LCDM cosmology is an important corroboration of this minimal cosmological model. For open LCDM, our BAO+SN+CMB combination yields $\Omega_m=0.301 \pm 0.008$ and curvature $\Omega_k=-0.003 \pm 0.003$. When we allow more general forms of evolving dark energy, the BAO+SN+CMB parameter constraints remain consistent with flat LCDM. While the overall $\chi^2$ of model fits is satisfactory, the LyaF BAO measurements are in moderate (2-2.5 sigma) tension with model predictions. Models with early dark energy that tracks the dominant energy component at high redshifts remain consistent with our constraints. Expansion history alone yields an upper limit of 0.56 eV on the summed mass of neutrino species, improving to 0.26 eV if we include Planck CMB lensing. Standard dark energy models constrained by our data predict a level of matter clustering that is high compared to most, but not all, observational estimates. (Abridged)
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Éric Aubourg, Stephen Bailey, Julian E. Bautista, Florian Beutler, Vaishali Bhardwaj, Dmitry Bizyaev, Michael Blanton, Michael Blomqvist, Adam S. Bolton, Jo Bovy, Howard Brewington, J. Brinkmann, Joel R. Brownstein, Angela Burden, Nicolás G. Busca, William Carithers, Chia-Hsun Chuang, Johan Comparat, Antonio J. Cuesta, Kyle S. Dawson, Timothée Delubac, Daniel J. Eisenstein, Andreu Font-Ribera, Jian Ge, J. -M. Le Goff, Satya Gontcho A Gontcho, J. Richard Gott III, James E. Gunn, Hong Guo, Julien Guy, Jean-Christophe Hamilton, Shirley Ho, Klaus Honscheid, Cullan Howlett, David Kirkby, Francisco S. Kitaura, Jean-Paul Kneib, Khee-Gan Lee, Dan Long, Robert H. Lupton, Mariana Vargas Magaña, Viktor Malanushenko, Elena Malanushenko, Marc Manera, Claudia Maraston, Daniel Margala, Cameron K. McBride, Jordi Miralda-Escudé, Adam D. Myers, Robert C. Nichol, Pasquier Noterdaeme, Sebastián E. Nuza, Matthew D. Olmstead, Daniel Oravetz, Isabelle Pâris, Nikhil Padmanabhan, Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille, Kaike Pan, Marcos Pellejero-Ibanez, Will J. Percival, Patrick Petitjean, Matthew M. Pieri, Francisco Prada, Beth Reid, Natalie A. Roe, Ashley J. Ross, Nicholas P. Ross, Graziano Rossi, Jose Alberto Rubiño-Martín, Ariel G. Sánchez, Lado Samushia, Ricardo Tanausú Génova Santos, Claudia G. Scóccola, David J. Schlegel, Donald P. Schneider, Hee-Jong Seo, Erin Sheldon, Audrey Simmons, Ramin A. Skibba, Anže Slosar, Michael A. Strauss, Daniel Thomas, Jeremy L. Tinker, Rita Tojeiro, Jose Alberto Vazquez, Matteo Viel, David A. Wake, Benjamin A. Weaver, David H. Weinberg, W. M. Wood-Vasey, Christophe Yèche, Idit Zehavi, Gong-Bo Zhao. 2014-11-04. Cosmological implications of baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.92.123516
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