Mass of Neutrino

edpell · Jan 10, 2015

What is the current upper limit on the mass of the most massive neutrino? How is that limit measured? Thanks.

mfb · Jan 10, 2015

Google finds tons of papers with the keywords "neutrino mass" or "neutrino mass upper limit".
http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.3518
http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.5034
http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.5076
The papers also explain how those masses are measured.

ChrisVer · Jan 10, 2015

We don't know the masses of the neutrino flavors, just because the neutrino flavors are a combination of neutrino mass eigenstates. A mean value would only make sense. The straightforward searches are based on Tritium, Pion and Tau weak decays. They all can give limits. Of course there are other means that can give lower limits, such as cosmological observations...

Some insight you can find here
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/neutrino-mass-paper.789275/page-2
posts #39 and post #34 (as an answer to my question)

As for the mass eigenstates, we still don't know their hierarchy... The difference of mass squared measured by the neutrino oscillation hasn't given us an insight of what is the lowest and highest mass (that's why when people give the mass eigenstates in presentations, they draw two diagrams, the one inversed to the other)

edpell · Jan 10, 2015

From reading around it seems the upper limit is in the range 0.3 to 2.4eV depending on which measurement method you favor. From the delta mass squared result we have a lower bound of at least one neutrino >= 0.04eV mass.

Orodruin · Jan 13, 2015

The question of the OP has been answered. I am closing this thread.

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Mass of Neutrino

edpell

mfb

Staff: Mentor

ChrisVer

edpell

Orodruin

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