Detecting the neutrinos mass hierarchy from cosmological data

Abstract

We propose a new parameterization to measure the neutrino mass hierarchy, namely $\Delta=(m_3-m_1)/(m_1+m_3)$ which is dimensionless and varies in the range $[-1,1]$. Taking into account the results of neutrino oscillation experiments, $\Delta$ is the unique parameter for determining all the masses of neutrinos, and a positive (negative) sign of $\Delta$ denotes the normal (inverted) mass hierarchy. Adopting the currently available cosmic observations, we find that the normal mass hierarchy is slightly favored, and the mass of lightest neutrino is less than $0.030$ eV for the normal mass hierarchy and $0.024$ eV for the inverted mass hierarchy at $95\%$ confidence level.