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Gariazzo, S., Martinez-Mirave, P., Mena, O., Pastor, S., & Tortola, M. (2023). Non-unitary three-neutrino mixing in the early Universe. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 03(3), 046–18pp.
Abstract: Deviations from unitarity in the three-neutrino mixing canonical picture are expected in many physics scenarios beyond the Standard Model. The mixing of new heavy neutral leptons with the three light neutrinos would in principle modify the strength and flavour structure of charged-current and neutral-current interactions with matter. Non-unitarity effects would therefore have an impact on the neutrino decoupling processes in the early Universe and on the value of the effective number of neutrinos, Neff. We calculate the cosmological energy density in the form of radiation with a non-unitary neutrino mixing matrix, addressing the possible interplay between parameters. Highly accurate measurements of Neff from forthcoming cosmological observations can provide independent and complementary limits on the departures from unitarity. For completeness, we relate the scenario of small deviations from unitarity to non-standard neutrino interactions and compare the forecasted constraints to other existing limits in the literature.
Keywords: cosmological neutrinos; neutrino properties; neutrino theory
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Di Valentino, E., Gariazzo, S., Giare, W., Melchiorri, A., Mena, O., & Renzi, F. (2023). Novel model-marginalized cosmological bound on the QCD axion mass. Phys. Rev. D, 107(10), 103528–16pp.
Abstract: We present model-marginalized limits on mixed hot dark matter scenarios, which consider both thermal neutrinos and thermal QCD axions. A novel aspect of our analyses is the inclusion of small-scale cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and the South Pole Telescope (SPT), together with those from the Planck satellite and baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) data. After marginalizing over a number of well-motivated nonminimal background cosmologies, the tightest 95% Confidential Level (CL) upper bound we obtain is 0.21 eV, both for P m nu and ma, from the combination of ACT, Planck and BAO measurements. Restricting the analyses to the standard ?CDM picture, we find P m nu < 0.16 eV and ma < 0.18 eV, both at 95% CL Interestingly, the best background cosmology is never found within the minimal ?CDM plus hot relics, regardless of the datasets exploited in the analyses. The combination of Planck with either BAO, SPT or ACT prefers a universe with a nonzero value of the running in the primordial power spectrum with strong evidence. Small-scale CMB probes, both alone and combined with BAO, either prefer, with substantial evidence, nonflat universes (as in the case of SPT) or a model with a time varying dark energy component (as in the case of ACT).
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Gariazzo, S., Mena, O., & Schwetz, T. (2023). Quantifying the tension between cosmological and terrestrial constraints on neutrino masses. Phys. Dark Universe, 40, 101226–8pp.
Abstract: The sensitivity of cosmology to the total neutrino mass scale E m & nu; is approaching the minimal values required by oscillation data. We study quantitatively possible tensions between current and forecasted cosmological and terrestrial neutrino mass limits by applying suitable statistical tests such as Bayesian suspiciousness, parameter goodness-of-fit tests, or a parameter difference test. In particular, the tension will depend on whether the normal or the inverted neutrino mass ordering is assumed. We argue, that it makes sense to reject inverted ordering from the cosmology/oscillation comparison only if data are consistent with normal ordering. Our results indicate that, in order to reject inverted ordering with this argument, an accuracy on the sum of neutrino masses & sigma;(m & nu;) of better than 0.02 eV would be required from future cosmological observations.
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Di Valentino, E., Gariazzo, S., Giare, W., & Mena, O. (2023). Impact of the damping tail on neutrino mass constraints. Phys. Rev. D, 108(8), 083509–11pp.
Abstract: Model-independent mass limits assess the robustness of current cosmological measurements of the neutrino mass scale. Consistency between high-multipole and low-multiple cosmic microwave background observations measuring such scale further valuates the constraining power of present data. We derive here up-to-date limits on neutrino masses and abundances exploiting either the Data Release 4 of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) or the South Pole Telescope polarization measurements from SPT-3G, envisaging different nonminimal background cosmologies and marginalizing over them. By combining these high-l observations with supernova Ia, baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), redshift space distortions (RSD) and a prior on the reionization optical depth fromWMAP data, we find that the marginalized bounds are competitive with those from Planck analyses. We obtain Sigma m(nu) < 0.139 eV and N-eff = 2.82 +/- 0.25 in a dark energy quintessence scenario, both at 95% CL. These limits translate into Sigma m(nu) < 0.20 eV and N-eff = 2.79(-0.28)(+0.30) after marginalizing over a plethora of well-motivated fiducial models. Our findings reassess both the strength and the reliability of cosmological neutrino mass constraints.
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Gariazzo, S., de Salas, P. F., Pisanti, O., & Consiglio, R. (2022). PArthENoPE revolutions. Comput. Phys. Commun., 271, 108205–13pp.
Abstract: This paper presents the main features of a new and updated version of the program PArthENoPE, which the community has been using for many years for computing the abundances of light elements produced during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. This is the third release of the PArthENoPE code, after the 2008 and the 2018 ones, and will be distributed from the code's website, http://parthenope.na.infn.it. Apart from minor changes, the main improvements in this new version include a revisited implementation of the nuclear rates for the most important reactions of deuterium destruction, H-2(p,gamma) He-3, H-2(d, n)He-3 and H-2(d, p)H-3, and a re-designed GUI, which extends the functionality of the previous one. The new GUI, in particular, supersedes the previous tools for running over grids of parameters with a better management of parallel runs, and it offers a brand-new set of functions for plotting the results. Program summary Program title: PArthENoPE 3.0 CPC Library link to program files: https://doi.org/10.17632/wygr7d8yt9.2 Developer's repository link: http://parthenope.na.infn.it Licensing provisions: GPLv3 Programming language: Fortran 77 and Python Nature of problem: Computation of yields of light elements synthesized in the primordial universe Solution method: Livermore Solver for Ordinary Differential Equations (LSODE) for stiff and nonstiff systems, Python GUI for running and plotting Journal reference of previous version: Comput. Phys. Commun. 233 (2018) 237-242 Does the new version supersede the previous version?: Yes Reasons for the new version: Update of the physics and improvements in the GUI Summary of revisions: Update of the physics implemented in the Fortran code and improvements in the GUI functionalities, in particular new plotting functions.
Keywords: Primordial nucleosynthesis; Cosmology; Neutrino physics
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