Neutrino masses and cosmological parameters from a Euclid-like survey: Markov Chain Monte Carlo forecasts including theoretical errors

Journal Article · Tue Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 2013 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2013/01/026· OSTI ID:22279618

Audren, Benjamin; Lesgourgues, Julien ^[1]; Bird, Simeon ^[2]; Haehnelt, Martin G. ^[3]; Viel, Matteo ^[4]

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1. Institut de Théorie des Phénomènes Physiques, École PolytechniqueFédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015, Lausanne (Switzerland)
2. Institute for Advanced Study, 1 Einstein Drive, Princeton, NJ, 08540 (United States)
3. Kavli Institute for Cosmology and Institute of Astronomy, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0HA (United Kingdom)
4. INAF/Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Via Tiepolo 11, 34143, Trieste (Italy)

We present forecasts for the accuracy of determining the parameters of a minimal cosmological model and the total neutrino mass based on combined mock data for a future Euclid-like galaxy survey and Planck. We consider two different galaxy surveys: a spectroscopic redshift survey and a cosmic shear survey. We make use of the Monte Carlo Markov Chains (MCMC) technique and assume two sets of theoretical errors. The first error is meant to account for uncertainties in the modelling of the effect of neutrinos on the non-linear galaxy power spectrum and we assume this error to be fully correlated in Fourier space. The second error is meant to parametrize the overall residual uncertainties in modelling the non-linear galaxy power spectrum at small scales, and is conservatively assumed to be uncorrelated and to increase with the ratio of a given scale to the scale of non-linearity. It hence increases with wavenumber and decreases with redshift. With these two assumptions for the errors and assuming further conservatively that the uncorrelated error rises above 2% at k = 0.4 h/Mpc and z = 0.5, we find that a future Euclid-like cosmic shear/galaxy survey achieves a 1-σ error on M{sub ν} close to 32 meV/25 meV, sufficient for detecting the total neutrino mass with good significance. If the residual uncorrelated errors indeed rises rapidly towards smaller scales in the non-linear regime as we have assumed here then the data on non-linear scales does not increase the sensitivity to the total neutrino mass. Assuming instead a ten times smaller theoretical error with the same scale dependence, the error on the total neutrino mass decreases moderately from σ(M{sub ν}) = 18 meV to 14 meV when mildly non-linear scales with 0.1 h/Mpc < k < 0.6 h/Mpc are included in the analysis of the galaxy survey data.

• OSTI ID: 22279618
• Journal Information: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Journal Issue: 01 Vol. 2013; ISSN 1475-7516
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGICAL MODELS
COSMOLOGY
ENERGY SPECTRA
ERRORS
GALAXIES
MARKOV PROCESS
MEV RANGE
MONTE CARLO METHOD
NEUTRINOS
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
RED SHIFT
REST MASS
SHEAR
SPACE