Recently, two issues concerning the three-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) likelihood code were pointed out. On large angular scales ($l\lesssim 30$), a suboptimal likelihood approximation resulted in a small power excess. On small angular scales ($l\gtrsim 300$), over-subtraction of unresolved point sources produced a small power deficit. For a minimal six-parameter cosmological model, these two effects conspired to decrease the value of $n_s$ by $\sim 0.7\sigma$. In this paper, we study the change in preferred parameter ranges for extended cosmological models, including running of $n_s$, massive neutrinos, curvature, and the equation of state for dark energy. We also include large-scale structure and supernova data in our analysis. We find that the parameter ranges for ${\alpha }_s$, ${\Omega }_k$ and $w$ are not much altered by the modified analysis. For massive neutrinos the upper limit on the sum of the neutrino masses decreases from $M_{\nu }<1.90\mathrm{eV}$ to $M_{\nu }<1.57\mathrm{eV}$ when using the modified WMAP code and WMAP data only. We also find that the shift of $n_s$ to higher values is quite robust to these extensions of the minimal cosmological model.

• Received 1 August 2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.74.123005