Constraints on neutrino masses from Baryon Acoustic Oscillation measurements

TL;DR

This paper uses 21 BAO measurements to constrain the sum of neutrino masses, providing bounds that depend on cosmological parameters and combining with other measurements for tighter limits.

Contribution

It offers a novel analysis of BAO data to estimate neutrino mass bounds considering parameter uncertainties and their impact on the results.

Findings

Sum of neutrino masses estimated as 0.711 ± 0.063 eV.

Neutrino mass upper limit of 0.43 eV at 95% confidence for parameter variations.

Demonstrates the importance of cosmological parameters in neutrino mass constraints.

Abstract

From 21 independent Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) measurements we obtain the following sum of masses of active Dirac or Majorana neutrinos: $\sum m_\nu = 0.711 - 0.335 \cdot \delta h + 0.050 \cdot \delta b \pm 0.063 \textrm{ eV,}$ where $\delta h \equiv (h - 0.678) / 0.009$ and $\delta b \equiv (\Omega_b h^2 - 0.02226) / 0.00023$. This result may be combined with independent measurements that constrain the parameters $\sum m_\nu$, $h$, and $\Omega_b h^2$. For $\delta h = \pm 1$ and $\delta b = \pm 1$, we obtain $m_\nu < 0.43$ eV at 95\% confidence.