Abstract
This chapter reviews that neutrinos, despite the weakness of their interactions and their small masses, can play an important role in Cosmology. The existence of the cosmic neutrino background (CNB) is a generic feature of the standard hot Big-Bang model. During the epoch, known as “Primordial” or “Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis” (BBN), the primordial abundances of light elements were produced. The cosmological data can provide information on the properties of these elusive particles, such as the effective number of neutrinos and the total neutrino mass. The analysis of current cosmological data constrains the sum of neutrino masses, complementary to terrestrial experiments such as tritium beta decay and neutrinoless double beta decay experiments. Together with photons, in the standard case neutrinos fix the expansion rate during the cosmological era when the Universe is dominated by radiation. The chapter describes the main cosmological observables and the effects caused by neutrino masses. In addition, the chapter reviews how the available cosmological data is used to get information on the absolute scale of neutrino masses, complementary to laboratory experiments.
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