Cosmology-marginalized approaches in Bayesian model comparison: the neutrino mass as a case study

Abstract

We propose here a \emph{novel} method which singles out the \emph{a priori} unavoidable dependence on the underlying cosmological model when extracting parameter constraints, providing robust limits which only depend on the considered dataset. Interestingly, when dealing with several possible cosmologies and interpreting the Bayesian preference in terms of the Gaussian statistical evidence, the preferred model is much less favored than when only two cases are compared. As a working example, we apply our approach to the cosmological neutrino mass bounds, which play a fundamental role not only in establishing the contribution of relic neutrinos to the dark matter of the Universe, but also in the planning of future experimental searches of the neutrino character and of the neutrino mass ordering.

6 pages, 1 table, 2 figures; matches version accepted for publication in PRD

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• On the most constraining cosmological neutrino mass bounds
• Inflation meets neutrinos
• How to relax the cosmological neutrino mass bound
• Model marginalized constraints on neutrino properties from cosmology
• Quantifying the tension between cosmological and terrestrial constraints on neutrino masses
• Discovery probabilities of Majorana neutrinos based on cosmological data