Model marginalized constraints on neutrino properties from cosmology

Abstract

We present robust, model-marginalized limits on both the total neutrino mass ($\sum m_{\nu }$) and abundance ($N_{\mathrm{eff}}$) to minimize the role of parameterizations, priors and models when extracting neutrino properties from cosmology. The cosmological observations we consider are CMB temperature fluctuation and polarization measurements, Supernovae Ia luminosity distances, BAO observations and determinations of the growth rate parameter from the Data Release 16 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV. The degenerate neutrino mass spectrum (which implies $\sum m_{\nu }>0$) is weakly (moderately) preferred over the normal and inverted hierarchy possibilities, which imply the priors $\sum m_{\nu }>0.06$ and $\sum m_{\nu }>0.1$ eV respectively. Concerning the underlying cosmological model, the $\Lambda$CDM minimal scenario is almost always strongly preferred over the possible extensions explored here. The most constraining $95\%$ CL bound on the total neutrino mass in the $\Lambda$CDM+$\sum m_{\nu }$ picture is $\sum m_{\nu }<0.087$ eV. The parameter $N_{\mathrm{eff}}$ is restricted to $3.08\pm 0.17$ ($68\%$ CL) in the $\Lambda$CDM+$N_{\mathrm{eff}}$ model. These limits barely change when considering the $\Lambda$CDM+$\sum m_{\nu }$+$N_{\mathrm{eff}}$ scenario. Given the robustness and the strong constraining power of the cosmological measurements employed here, the model-marginalized posteriors obtained considering a large spectra of non-minimal cosmologies are very close to the previous bounds, obtained within the $\Lambda$CDM framework in the degenerate neutrino mass spectrum. Future cosmological measurements may improve the current Bayesian evidence favouring the degenerate neutrino mass spectra, challenging therefore the consistency between cosmological neutrino mass bounds and oscillation neutrino measurements, and potentially suggesting a more complicated cosmological model and/or neutrino sector.

11 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables. Minor changes to match the version accepted for publication in PRD

References in corpus (18)

• Bayes in the sky: Bayesian inference and model selection in cosmology
• Massive neutrinos and cosmology
• Planck evidence for a closed Universe and a possible crisis for cosmology
• The Completed SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: measurement of the BAO and growth rate of structure of the luminous red galaxy sample from the anisotropic correlation function between redshifts 0.6 and 1
• A precision calculation of relic neutrino decoupling
• Neutrino mass from Cosmology
• Growing Matter
• The neutrino mass bound from WMAP-3, the baryon acoustic peak, the SNLS supernovae and the Lyman-alpha forest
• On the most constraining cosmological neutrino mass bounds
• Relic Neutrinos, thermal axions and cosmology in early 2014
• Neutrino physics from precision cosmology
• An improved cosmological bound on the thermal axion mass
• Invisible neutrino decay in precision cosmology
• Distinguishing between Neutrinos and time-varying Dark Energy through Cosmic Time
• The full Boltzmann hierarchy for dark matter-massive neutrino interactions
• How to relax the cosmological neutrino mass bound
• Future cosmological sensitivity for hot dark matter axions
• Cosmology-marginalized approaches in Bayesian model comparison: the neutrino mass as a case study

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Massive neutrino self-interactions and inflation
• Neutrino masses from large-scale structures: future sensitivity and theory dependence