English

Forecasting neutrino mass constraints from the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2026-04-17 v1

Abstract

We present realistic forecasts for the constraining power of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on fundamental cosmological parameters, with particular emphasis on the absolute neutrino mass scale, using full-shape analyzes of the galaxy power spectrum. We analyze simulated lightcone mock catalogs of Hα\alpha emission-line galaxies spanning the redshift range 0.5<z<20.5 < z < 2 over 2400 deg22400\ \mathrm{deg}^2, designed to reproduce the expected properties of the Roman High Latitude Wide Area Spectroscopic Survey. We perform parameter inference on the galaxy power spectrum multipoles using two complementary theoretical frameworks: a model-dependent approach based on the Effective Field Theory of Large-Scale Structure (EFT of LSS) within Λ\LambdaCDM, and a model-independent phenomenological approach that makes no assumptions about the background cosmological model. In the Λ\LambdaCDM analysis, we find mν<0.380(0.162) eVm_\nu < 0.380(0.162)\ \mathrm{eV} at 95(68)%95(68)\% C.L. using Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) prior and a broad prior on nsn_s, which tightens to mν<0.276(0.121) eVm_\nu < 0.276(0.121)\ \mathrm{eV} when Planck priors on ωb\omega_b, ωcdm\omega_\mathrm{cdm}, and nsn_s are added. Our forecasts show that Roman can additionally constrain H0H_0, Ωm\Omega_m, and σ8\sigma_8 with precisions of 1.3%1.3\%, 4.3%4.3\%, and 2.9%2.9\% in line with Stage IV galaxy survey measurements and forecasts. In the model-independent analysis, we demonstrate that the phenomenological model can robustly recover unbiased measurements of the angular diameter distance, the Hubble parameter, and the growth of structure across all redshift bins, in the same range of scales as the EFT model, and obtain mν<0.63(0.36) eVm_\nu < 0.63(0.36)\ \mathrm{eV} at 95(68)%95(68)\% C.L. when Planck priors are included.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.14504,
  title  = {Forecasting neutrino mass constraints from the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope},
  author = {Francesco Spezzati and Yun Wang and Andrew Hearin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.14504},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

12 pages,5 figures