Abstract: | Statistical measures of galaxy clusters are sensitive to neutrino masses in the sub-eV range. We explore the possibility of using cluster number counts from the ongoing PLANCK/SZ and future cosmic-variance-limited surveys to constrain neutrino masses from CMB data alone.
We find that projected results from the PLANCK/SZ survey can be used to determine the total neutrino mass with an uncertainty of 0.08-0.11 eV, assuming fiducial neutrino mass in the range 0.1-0.3 eV. This improves on the limits expected from PLANCK/CMB lensing measurements by a factor 1.5-2. With a cosmic-variance-limited SZ survey we obtain an uncertainty of 0.05-0.07 eV.
Our analysis shows that if the (total) neutrino mass is close to the lower limits deduced from neutrino oscillation experiments, cluster number counts provide a viable complimentary cosmological probe to CMB lensing constraints on M_nu. |