Weighing neutrinos using high redshift galaxy luminosity functions

Understand

Laboratory experiments measuring neutrino oscillations, indicate small mass differences between different mass eigenstates of neutrinos.

• The absolute mass scale is however not determined, with at present the strongest upper limits coming from astronomical observations rather than terrestrial experiments.
• The presence of massive neutrinos suppresses the growth of perturbations below a characteristic mass scale, thereby leading to a decreased abundance of collapsed dark matter halos.
• Here we show that this effect can significantly alter the predicted luminosity function (LF) of high redshift galaxies.