The promising future of a robust cosmological neutrino mass measurement

TL;DR

This paper forecasts the potential of future cosmological surveys combining CMB and Large Scale Structure data to precisely measure neutrino mass, accounting for systematic uncertainties and non-linear effects.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of 35 data set combinations and demonstrates their high potential for neutrino mass detection under conservative assumptions.

Findings

Future surveys can measure neutrino mass with high significance.

Systematic uncertainties and non-linear scales have limited impact on sensitivity.

Parameter degeneracies are unlikely to hinder neutrino mass measurements.

Abstract

We forecast the sensitivity of thirty-five different combinations of future Cosmic Microwave Background and Large Scale Structure data sets to cosmological parameters and to the total neutrino mass. We work under conservative assumptions accounting for uncertainties in the modelling of systematics. In particular, for galaxy redshift surveys, we remove the information coming from non-linear scales. We use Bayesian parameter extraction from mock likelihoods to avoid Fisher matrix uncertainties. Our grid of results allows for a direct comparison between the sensitivity of different data sets. We find that future surveys will measure the neutrino mass with high significance and will not be substantially affected by potential parameter degeneracies between neutrino masses, the density of relativistic relics, and a possible time-varying equation of state of Dark Energy.