Cosmological Axion and neutrino mass constraints from Planck 2015 temperature and polarization data

TL;DR

This paper uses Planck 2015 data to set the most stringent cosmological bounds to date on the sum of neutrino masses and thermal axion masses, highlighting their degeneracy and impact on cosmological observables.

Contribution

It provides the tightest constraints to date on relic axion and neutrino masses using full Planck polarization data in a mixed hot dark matter scenario.

Findings

Neutrino mass sum constrained to <0.136 eV at 95% CL.

Neutrino mass sum constrained to <0.126 eV with SZ data.

Thermal axion mass constrained to <0.529 eV at 95% CL.

Abstract

Axions currently provide the most compelling solution to the strong CP problem. These particles may be copiously produced in the early universe, including via thermal processes. Therefore, relic axions constitute a hot dark matter component and their masses are strongly degenerate with those of the three active neutrinos, as they leave identical signatures in the different cosmological observables. In addition, thermal axions, while still relativistic states, also contribute to the relativistic degrees of freedom, parameterised via $N_{eff}$. We present the cosmological bounds on the relic axion and neutrino masses, exploiting the full Planck mission data, which include polarization measurements. In the mixed hot dark matter scenario explored here, we find the tightest and more robust constraint to date on the sum of the three active neutrino masses, $\sum m_\nu <0.136$ eV at $95\%$ CL, obtained in the well-known linear perturbation regime. The Planck Sunyaev-Zeldovich cluster number count data further tightens this bound, providing a $95\%$ CL upper limit of $\sum m_\nu <0.126$ eV in this very same mixed hot dark matter model, a value which is very close to the expectations in the inverted hierarchical neutrino mass scenario. Using this same combination of data sets we find the most stringent bound to date on the thermal axion mass, $m_a<0.529$ eV at $95\%$ CL.