English

Target Neutrino Mass Precision for Determining the Neutrino Hierarchy

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2020-04-15 v3 Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

Recent works combining neutrino oscillation and cosmological data to determine the neutrino hierarchy found a range of odds in favour of the normal hierarchy. These results arise from differing approaches to incorporating prior knowledge about neutrinos. We develop a hierarchy-agnostic prior and show that the hierarchy cannot be conclusively determined with current data. The determination of the hierarchy is limited by the neutrino mass scale Σν\Sigma_{\nu} measurement. We obtain a target precision of σ(Σν)=0.014\sigma(\Sigma_{\nu}) = 0.014 eV, necessary for conclusively establishing the normal hierarchy with future data.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1907.04331,
  title  = {Target Neutrino Mass Precision for Determining the Neutrino Hierarchy},
  author = {Constance Mahony and Boris Leistedt and Hiranya V. Peiris and Jonathan Braden and Benjamin Joachimi and Andreas Korn and Linda Cremonesi and Ryan Nichol},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.04331},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

v3: Version accepted in Phys Rev D. Minor clarifications and added robustness tests, conclusions unchanged