Cosmological implications of baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements
Creators: name: Aubourg, Éric
name: Bailey, Stephen
name: Bautista, Julian E.
name: Beutler, Florian
name: Bhardwaj, Vaishali
name: Bizyaev, Dmitry
name: Blanton, Michael
name: Blomqvist, Michael
name: Bolton, Adam S.
name: Bovy, Jo
name: Brewington, Howard
name: Brinkmann, J.
name: Brownstein, Joel R.
name: Burden, Angela
name: Busca, Nicolás G.
name: Carithers, William
name: Chuang, Chia-Hsun
name: Comparat, Johan
name: Cuesta, Antonio J.
name: Dawson, Kyle S.
name: Delubac, Timothée
name: Eisenstein, Daniel J.
name: Font-Ribera, Andreu
name: Ge, Jian
name: Goff, J. -M. Le
name: Gontcho, Satya Gontcho A
name: Gott, J. Richard
name: Gunn, James E.
name: Guo, Hong
name: Guy, Julien
name: Hamilton, Jean-Christophe
name: Ho, Shirley
name: Honscheid, Klaus
name: Howlett, Cullan
name: Kirkby, David
name: Kitaura, Francisco S.
name: Kneib, Jean-Paul
name: Lee, Khee-Gan
name: Long, Dan
name: Lupton, Robert H.
name: Magaña, Mariana Vargas
name: Malanushenko, Viktor
name: Malanushenko, Elena
name: Manera, Marc
name: Maraston, Claudia
name: Margala, Daniel
name: McBride, Cameron K.
name: Miralda-Escudé, Jordi
name: Myers, Adam D.
name: Nichol, Robert C.
name: Noterdaeme, Pasquier
name: Nuza, Sebastián E.
name: Olmstead, Matthew D.
name: Oravetz, Daniel
name: Pâris, Isabelle
name: Padmanabhan, Nikhil
name: Palanque-Delabrouille, Nathalie
name: Pan, Kaike
name: Pellejero-Ibanez, Marcos
name: Percival, Will J.
name: Petitjean, Patrick
name: Pieri, Matthew M.
name: Prada, Francisco
name: Reid, Beth
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: Samushia, Lado
name: Santos, Ricardo Tanausú Génova
name: Scóccola, Claudia G.
name: Schlegel, David J.
name: Schneider, Donald P.
name: Seo, Hee-Jong
name: Sheldon, Erin
name: Simmons, Audrey
name: Skibba, Ramin A.
name: Slosar, Anže
name: Strauss, Michael A.
name: Thomas, Daniel
name: Tinker, Jeremy L.
name: Tojeiro, Rita
name: Vazquez, Jose Alberto
name: Viel, Matteo
name: Wake, David A.
name: Weaver, Benjamin A.
name: Weinberg, David H.
name: Wood-Vasey, W. M.
name: Yèche, Christophe
name: Zehavi, Idit
name: Zhao, Gong-Bo
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2014
Subjects: subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc)
subject: High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: 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 $Ω_m=0.301 \pm 0.008$ and curvature $Ω_k=-0.003 \pm 0.003$. When we allow more general forms of evolving dark energy, the BAO+SN+CMB parameter constraints remain consistent with flat LCDM. While the overall $χ^2$ 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)
description: 38 pages, 20 figures, BOSS collaboration paper; v2: fixed inconsistent definitions of DH, added references; v3: version accepted by PRD, corrected error resulting in significantly weaker constraints on decaying dark matter model