Relaxing cosmological neutrino mass bounds with unstable neutrinos

2020

At present, cosmological observations set the most stringent bound on the neutrino mass scale. Within the standard cosmological model ($\Lambda$CDM), the Planck collaboration reports $\sum m_\nu < 0.12\,\text{eV}$ at 95% CL. This bound, taken at face value, excludes many neutrino mass models. However, unstable neutrinos, with lifetimes shorter than the age of the universe $\tau_\nu \lesssim t_U$, represent a particle physics avenue to relax this constraint. Motivated by this fact, we present a taxonomy of neutrino decay modes, categorizing them in terms of particle content and final decay products. Taking into account the relevant phenomenological bounds, our analysis shows that 2-body deca…