Toward the measurement of neutrino masses: Performance of cosmic magnification with submillimeter galaxies

¹ SISSA, Via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy
e-mail: mmunizcu@sissa.it
² IFPU – Institute for fundamental physics of the Universe, Via Beirut 2, 34014 Trieste, Italy
³ Departamento de Fisica, Universidad de Oviedo, C. Federico Garcia Lorca 18, 33007 Oviedo, Spain
⁴ Instituto Universitario de Ciencias y Tecnologías Espaciales de Asturias (ICTEA), C. Independencia 13, 33004 Oviedo, Spain
⁵ IRA-INAF, Via Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy
⁶ INFN-Sezione di Trieste, Via Valerio 2, 34127 Trieste, Italy
⁷ INAF-OATS, Via G. B. Tiepolo 11, 34131 Trieste, Italy

Received: 23 January 2024
Accepted: 7 May 2024

Abstract

Context. The phenomenon of magnification bias can induce a non-negligible angular correlation between two samples of galaxies with nonoverlapping redshift distributions. This signal is particularly clear when background submillimeter galaxies are used, and has been shown to constitute an independent cosmological probe.

Aims. This work extends prior studies on the submillimeter galaxy magnification bias to the massive neutrino scenario, with the aim being to assess its sensitivity as a cosmological observable to the sum of neutrino masses.

Methods. The measurements of the angular cross-correlation function between moderate redshift GAMA galaxies and high-redshift submillimeter H-ATLAS galaxies are fit to the weak lensing prediction down to the arcmin scale. The signal is interpreted under the halo model, which is modified to accommodate massive neutrinos. We discuss the impact of the choice of cosmological parametrization on the sensitivity to neutrino masses.

Results. The currently available data on the magnification bias affecting submillimeter galaxies are sensitive to neutrino masses when a cosmological parametrization in terms of the primordial amplitude of the power spectrum (A_s) is chosen over the local root mean square of smoothed linear density perturbations (σ₈). A clear upper limit on the sum of neutrino masses can be derived if the value of A_s is either fixed or assigned a narrow Gaussian prior, a behavior that is robust against changes to the chosen value.