The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: signs of neutrino mass in current cosmological datasets

Abstract

We investigate the cosmological implications of the latest growth of structure measurement from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) CMASS Data Release 11 with particular focus on the sum of the neutrino masses, ∑mnu. We examine the robustness of the cosmological constraints from the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) scale, the Alcock-Paczynski effect and redshift-space distortions (DV/rs, FAP, fsigma8) of Beutler et al., when introducing a neutrino mass in the power spectrum template. We then discuss how the neutrino mass relaxes discrepancies between the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and other low-redshift measurements within Lambda cold dark matter. Combining our cosmological constraints with 9-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP9) yields ∑mnu = 0.36 ± 0.14 eV (68 per cent c.l.), which represents a 2.6sigma preference for non-zero neutrino mass. The significance can be increased to 3.3sigma when including weak lensing results and other BAO constraints, yielding ∑mnu = 0.35 ± 0.10 eV (68 per cent c.l.). However, combining CMASS with Planck data reduces the preference for neutrino mass to ¿2sigma. When removing the CMB lensing effect in the Planck temperature power spectrum (by marginalizing over AL), we see shifts of ¿1sigma in sigma8 and Omegam, which have a significant effect on the neutrino mass constraints. In the case of CMASS plus Planck without the AL lensing signal, we find a preference for a neutrino mass of ∑mnu = 0.34 ± 0.14 eV (68 per cent c.l.), in excellent agreement with the WMAP9+CMASS value. The constraint can be tightened to 3.4sigma yielding ∑mnu = 0.36 ± 0.10 eV (68 per cent c.l.) when weak lensing data and other BAO constraints are included.