• Milestone

Cosmological parameters from SDSS and WMAP

Max Tegmark et al.
Phys. Rev. D 69, 103501 – Published 5 May 2004
An article within the collection: 2015 - General Relativity’s Centennial and the Physical Review D 50th Anniversary Milestones
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Abstract

We measure cosmological parameters using the three-dimensional power spectrum P(k) from over 200 000 galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in combination with Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and other data. Our results are consistent with a “vanilla” flat adiabatic cold dark matter model with a cosmological constant without tilt (ns=1), running tilt, tensor modes, or massive neutrinos. Adding SDSS information more than halves the WMAP-only error bars on some parameters, tightening 1σ constraints on the Hubble parameter from h0.740.07+0.18 to h0.700.03+0.04, on the matter density from Ωm0.25±0.10 to Ωm0.30±0.04 (1σ) and on neutrino masses from <11 to <0.6eV (95%). SDSS helps even more when dropping prior assumptions about curvature, neutrinos, tensor modes and the equation of state. Our results are in substantial agreement with the joint analysis of WMAP and the Two Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey, which is an impressive consistency check with independent redshift survey data and analysis techniques. In this paper, we place particular emphasis on clarifying the physical origin of the constraints, i.e., what we do and do not know when using different data sets and prior assumptions. For instance, dropping the assumption that space is perfectly flat, the WMAP-only constraint on the measured age of the Universe tightens from t016.31.8+2.3Gyr to t014.10.9+1.0Gyr by adding SDSS and SN Ia data. Including tensors, running tilt, neutrino mass and equation of state in the list of free parameters, many constraints are still quite weak, but future cosmological measurements from SDSS and other sources should allow these to be substantially tightened.

  • Received 28 October 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.69.103501

©2004 American Physical Society

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This article appears in the following collections:

2015 - General Relativity’s Centennial

The editors of the Physical Review journals have curated a collection of landmark papers on General Relativity to celebrate its centennial.

Physical Review D 50th Anniversary Milestones

This collection of seminal papers from PRD highlights research that remains central to developments today in particle physics, quantum field and string theory, gravitation, cosmology, and particle astrophysics.

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Vol. 69, Iss. 10 — 15 May 2004

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