Research Note

Mass-varying neutrino in light of cosmic microwave background and weak lensing

¹ Physics Department “G. Occhialini”Milano-Bicocca University and I.N.F.N., 20126 Milano, Italy
e-mail: lavacca@mib.infn.it
² Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo, 0315 Oslo, Norway

Received: 20 December 2012
Accepted: 23 September 2013

Abstract

Aims. We aim to constrain mass-varying neutrino models using large scale structure observations and produce forecast for the Euclid survey.

Methods. We investigate two models with different scalar field potential and both positive and negative coupling parameters β. These parameters correspond to growing or decreasing neutrino mass, respectively. We explore couplings up to | β |  ≲ 5.

Results. In the case of the exponential potential, we find an upper limit on Ω_νh² < 0.004 at 2σ level. In the case of the inverse power law potential the null coupling can be excluded with more than 2σ significance; the limits on the coupling are β > 3 for the growing neutrino mass and β <  − 1.5 for the decreasing mass case. This is a clear sign for a preference of higher couplings. When including a prior on the present neutrino mass the upper limit on the coupling becomes | β |  < 3 at 2σ level for the exponential potential. Finally, we present a Fisher forecast using the tomographic weak lensing from an Euclid-like experiment and we also consider the combination with the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarisation spectra from a Planck-like mission. If considered alone, lensing data is more efficient in constraining Ω_ν with respect to CMB data alone. There is, however, a strong degeneracy in the β-Ω_νh² plane. When the two data sets are combined, the latter degeneracy remains, but the errors are reduced by a factor ~2 for both parameters.