The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: cosmological analysis of the DR12 galaxy sample
Creators: name: Alam, Shadab
name: Ata, Metin
name: Bailey, Stephen
name: Beutler, Florian
name: Bizyaev, Dmitry
name: Blazek, Jonathan A.
name: Bolton, Adam S.
name: Brownstein, Joel R.
name: Burden, Angela
name: Chuang, Chia-Hsun
name: Comparat, Johan
name: Cuesta, Antonio J.
name: Dawson, Kyle S.
name: Eisenstein, Daniel J.
name: Escoffier, Stephanie
name: Gil-Marín, Héctor
name: Grieb, Jan Niklas
name: Hand, Nick
name: Ho, Shirley
name: Kinemuchi, Karen
name: Kirkby, David
name: Kitaura, Francisco
name: Malanushenko, Elena
name: Malanushenko, Viktor
name: Maraston, Claudia
name: McBride, Cameron K.
name: Nichol, Robert C.
name: Olmstead, Matthew D.
name: Oravetz, Daniel
name: Padmanabhan, Nikhil
name: Palanque-Delabrouille, Nathalie
name: Pan, Kaike
name: Pellejero-Ibanez, Marcos
name: Percival, Will J.
name: Petitjean, Patrick
name: Prada, Francisco
name: Price-Whelan, Adrian M.
name: Reid, Beth A.
name: Rodríguez-Torres, Sergio A.
name: Roe, Natalie A.
name: Ross, Ashley J.
name: Ross, Nicholas P.
name: Rossi, Graziano
name: Rubiño-Martín, Jose Alberto
name: Sánchez, Ariel G.
name: Saito, Shun
name: Salazar-Albornoz, Salvador
name: Samushia, Lado
name: Satpathy, Siddharth
name: Scóccola, Claudia G.
name: Schlegel, David J.
name: Schneider, Donald P.
name: Seo, Hee-Jong
name: Simmons, Audrey
name: Slosar, Anže
name: Strauss, Michael A.
name: Swanson, Molly E. C.
name: Thomas, Daniel
name: Tinker, Jeremy L.
name: Tojeiro, Rita
name: Magaña, Mariana Vargas
name: Vazquez, Jose Alberto
name: Verde, Licia
name: Wake, David A.
name: Wang, Yuting
name: Weinberg, David H.
name: White, Martin
name: Wood-Vasey, W. Michael
name: Yèche, Christophe
name: Zehavi, Idit
name: Zhai, Zhongxu
name: Zhao, Gong-Bo
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2016
Subjects: subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We present cosmological results from the final galaxy clustering data set of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our combined galaxy sample comprises 1.2 million massive galaxies over an effective area of 9329 deg^2 and volume of 18.7 Gpc^3, divided into three partially overlapping redshift slices centred at effective redshifts 0.38, 0.51, and 0.61. We measure the angular diameter distance DM and Hubble parameter H from the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) method after applying reconstruction to reduce non-linear effects on the BAO feature. Using the anisotropic clustering of the pre-reconstruction density field, we measure the product DM*H from the Alcock-Paczynski (AP) effect and the growth of structure, quantified by fσ8(z), from redshift-space distortions (RSD). We combine measurements presented in seven companion papers into a set of consensus values and likelihoods, obtaining constraints that are tighter and more robust than those from any one method. Combined with Planck 2015 cosmic microwave background measurements, our distance scale measurements simultaneously imply curvature Ω_K =0.0003+/-0.0026 and a dark energy equation of state parameter w = -1.01+/-0.06, in strong affirmation of the spatially flat cold dark matter model with a cosmological constant (ΛCDM). Our RSD measurements of fσ_8, at 6 per cent precision, are similarly consistent with this model. When combined with supernova Ia data, we find H0 = 67.3+/-1.0 km/s/Mpc even for our most general dark energy model, in tension with some direct measurements. Adding extra relativistic species as a degree of freedom loosens the constraint only slightly, to H0 = 67.8+/-1.2 km/s/Mpc. Assuming flat ΛCDM we find Ω_m = 0.310+/-0.005 and H0 = 67.6+/-0.5 km/s/Mpc, and we find a 95% upper limit of 0.16 eV/c^2 on the neutrino mass sum.
description: 38 pages, 20 figures, 12 tables. Submitted to MNRAS. Clustering data and likelihoods are made available at https://sdss3.org/science/boss_publications.php