Non-zero neutrino mass would affect the evolution of the Universe in observable ways, and a strong constraint on the mass can be achieved using combinations of cosmological data sets. We focus on the power spectrum of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies, the Hubble constant H 0 , and the length scale for baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) to investigate the constraint on the neutrino mass, m ν . We analyze data from multiple existing CMB studies (WMAP5, ACBAR, CBI, BOOMERANG, and QUAD), recent measurement of H 0 (SHOES), with about two times lower uncertainty (5 %) than previous estimates, and recent treatments of BAO from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We obtained an upper limit of m ν < 0.2 eV (95 % C.L.), for a flat ΛCDM model. This is a 40 % reduction in the limit derived from previous H 0 estimates and one-third lower than can be achieved with extant CMB and BAO data. We also analyze the impact of smaller uncertainty on measurements of H 0 as may be anticipated in the near term, in combination with CMB data from the Planck mission, and BAO data from the SDSS/BOSS program. We demonstrate the possibility of a 5σ detection for a fiducial neutrino mass of 0.1 eV or a 95 % upper limit of 0.04 eV for a fiducial of m ν = 0 eV. These constraints are about 50 % better than those achieved without external constraint. We further investigate the impact on modeling where the dark-energy equation of state is constant but not necessarily −1, or where a non-flat universe is allowed. In these cases, the next-generation accuracies of Planck, BOSS, and 1 % measurement of H 0 would all be required to obtain the limit m ν < 0.05 − 0.06 eV (95 % C.L.) for the fiducial of m ν = 0 eV. The independence of systematics argues for pursuit of both BAO and H 0 measurements.Keywords: neutrino masses from cosmology, cosmological parameters from CMBR, cosmological neutrinos, baryon acoustic oscillations ArXiv ePrint: 0911.0976
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