Revealing the neutrino mass through persistent homology of the cosmic web

Wang, J, Elbers, W, Frenk, CS, Cole, S, Yang, X, McCarthy, IG ORCID: 0000-0002-1286-483X and van de Weygaert, R (2026) Revealing the neutrino mass through persistent homology of the cosmic web. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 549 (2). ISSN 0035-8711

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Abstract

Cosmological constraints on neutrino mass offer a promising avenue for advancing our understanding of both fundamental particle physics and the evolution of cosmic large-scale structure. To overcome challenges associated with traditional probes of neutrino mass, particularly degeneracies with other parameters, we consider topological summaries of the cosmic web based on the formalism of persistent homology. We introduce persistence strips, a novel representation that segments Betti curves by topological persistence, effectively condensing 2D persistence diagrams into a set of 1D curves. Applied to the FLAMINGO suite of cosmological simulations, these topological descriptors demonstrate pronounced sensitivity to neutrino mass. By constructing an emulator spanning a 10D w0 wa CDM + ν cosmological parameter space that includes parameters degenerate with neutrino masses in conventional approaches, assuming a volume of only (350 Mpc )3 , we obtain neutrino mass constraints with an uncertainty of 0.05 eV for the total matter field and 0.13 eV for the dark matter-only field, with the strongest constraints coming from void topology. Persistence strips exhibit roughly twice the constraining power of unbinned Betti curves and, through their multiscale, environment-dependent sensitivity, systematically break degeneracies between neutrino mass and other cosmological parameters. We pinpoint the precise physical origin of the signal, identifying two equally important contributions: sensitivity to the neutrino mass fraction, which is highest in underdense regions, and the impact of neutrinos on the distribution of dark matter. Our findings highlight the particular promise of applying topological statistics to weak lensing measurements, which directly probe the total matter distribution.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	neutrinos; dark matter; cosmology: theory; large-scale structure of Universe; 5106 Nuclear and Plasma Physics; 5107 Particle and High Energy Physics; 51 Physical Sciences; 0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences; Astronomy & Astrophysics; 5101 Astronomical sciences; 5107 Particle and high energy physics; 5109 Space sciences
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy
Divisions:	Astrophysics Research Institute
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Date of acceptance:	13 May 2026
Date of first compliant Open Access:	12 June 2026
Date Deposited:	12 Jun 2026 10:57
Last Modified:	12 Jun 2026 10:57
DOI or ID number:	10.1093/mnras/stag937
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/28821

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