What will it take to measure individual neutrino mass states using cosmology?

We study the impact of assumptions made about the neutrino mass ordering on cosmological parameter estimation with the purpose of understanding whether in the future it will be possible to infer the specific neutrino mass distribution from cosmological data. We find that although the commonly used a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of cosmology and astroparticle physics 2020-09, Vol.2020 (9), p.21-21
Main Authors: Archidiacono, Maria, Hannestad, Steen, Lesgourgues, Julien
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Big Bang theory
Cosmic microwave background
Cosmology
Flux density
Large scale structure of the universe
Mass distribution
Neutrinos
Parameter estimation
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We study the impact of assumptions made about the neutrino mass ordering on cosmological parameter estimation with the purpose of understanding whether in the future it will be possible to infer the specific neutrino mass distribution from cosmological data. We find that although the commonly used assumption of a degenerate neutrino hierarchy is manifestly wrong and leads to changes in cosmological observables such as the cosmic microwave background and large scale structure compared to the correct (normal or inverted) neutrino hierarchy, the induced changes are so small that even with extremely optimistic assumptions about future data they will remain undetectable. We are thus able to conclude that while cosmology can probe the neutrino contribution to the cosmic energy density extremely precisely (and hence provide a detection of a non-zero total neutrino mass at high significance), it will not be possible to directly measure the individual neutrino masses.
ISSN:1475-7516
1475-7516
DOI:10.1088/1475-7516/2020/09/021