Abstract: We present neutrino mass bounds using 900,000 luminous galaxies with photometric redshifts measured from Sloan Digital Sky Survey III Data Release 8. The galaxies have photometric redshifts between z = 0.45 and z = 0.65 and cover 10,000 deg(2), thus probing a volume of 3 h(-3) Gpc(3) and enabling tight constraints to be derived on the amount of dark matter in the form of massive neutrinos. A new bound on the sum of neutrino masses Sigma m nu < 0.27 eV, at the 95% confidence level (CL), is obtained after combining our sample of galaxies, which we call “CMASS,” with Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) seven-year cosmic microwave background data and the most recent measurement of the Hubble parameter from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). This constraint is obtained with a conservative multipole range of 30 < l < 200 in order to minimize nonlinearities, and a free bias parameter in each of the four redshift bins. We study the impact of assuming this linear galaxy bias model using mock catalogs and find that this model causes a small (similar to 1 sigma-1.5 sigma) bias in Omega(DM)h(2). For this reason, we also quote neutrino bounds based on a conservative galaxy bias model containing additional, shot-noise-like free parameters. In this conservative case, the bounds are significantly weakened, e. g., Sigma m(nu) < 0.38 eV (95% CL) for WMAP+HST+CMASS (l(max) = 200). We also study the dependence of the neutrino bound on the multipole range (l(max) = 150 versus l(max) = 200) and on which combination of data sets is included as a prior. The addition of supernova and/or baryon acoustic oscillation data does not significantly improve the neutrino mass bound once the HST prior is included. A companion paper describes the construction of the angular power spectra in detail and derives constraints on a general cosmological model, including the dark energy equation of state w and the spatial curvature Omega(K), while a second companion paper presents a measurement of the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations from the same data set. All three works are based on the catalog by Ross et al.

Abstract: In models with dark matter made of particles with keV masses, such as a sterile neutrino, small-scale density perturbations are suppressed, delaying the period at which the lowest mass galaxies are formed and therefore shifting the reionization processes to later epochs. In this study, focusing on Warm Dark Matter (WDM) with masses close to its present lower bound, i.e., around the 3. keV region, we derive constraints from galaxy luminosity functions, the ionization history and the Gunn-Peterson effect. We show that even if star formation efficiency in the simulations is adjusted to match the observed UV galaxy luminosity functions in both CDM and WDM models, the full distribution of Gunn-Peterson optical depth retains the strong signature of delayed reionization in the WDM model. However, until the star formation and stellar feedback model used in modern galaxy formation simulations is constrained better, any conclusions on the nature of dark matter derived from reionization observables remain model-dependent.

Abstract: We describe the main features of a new and updated version of the program PArthENoPE, which computes the abundances of light elements produced during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. As the previous first release in 2008, the new one, PArthENoPE2.0, is publicly available and distributed from the code site, http://parthenope.na.infn.it . Apart from minor changes, which will be also detailed, the main improvements are as follows. The powerful, but not freely accessible, NAG routines have been substituted by ODEPACK libraries, without any significant loss in precision. Moreover, we have developed a Graphical User Interface (GUI) which allows a friendly use of the code and a simpler implementation of running for grids of input parameters. New Version program summary Program Title: PArthENoPE2.0 Program Files doi : http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/wvgr7d8yt9.1 Licensing provisions: GPLv3 Programming language: Fortran 77 and Python Supplementary material: User Manual available on the web page http://parthenope.na.infn.it Journal reference of previous version: Comput. Phys. Commun. 178 (2008) 956 971 Does the new version supersede the previous version?: Yes Reasons for the new version: Make the code more versatile and user friendly Summary of revisions: (1) Publicly available libraries (2) GUI for configuration Nature of problem: Computation of yields of light elements synthesized in the primordial universe Solution method: Livermore Solver for Ordinary Differential Equations (LSODE) for stiff and nonstiff systems