Neutrino masses from clustering of red and blue galaxies: a test of astrophysical uncertainties

Understand

Combining measurements of the galaxy power spectrum and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a powerful means of constraining the summed mass of neutrino species sum(m_nu), but is subject to systematic uncertainties due to non-linear structure formation, redshift-space distortions and galaxy bias.

• We empirically test the robustness of neutrino mass results to these effects by separately analyzing power spectra of red and blue galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II) Data Release 7 (DR7), combined with the CMB five-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP5) data.
• We consider fitting for a range of maximum wavenumber k using twelve different galaxy bias models.
• For example, using a new model based on perturbation theory and including redshift space distortions (Saito et al.