Forecasting neutrino mass constraints from the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
Phys. Rev. D 114, 063502 – Published 1 September, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/52ng-jhrg
Abstract
We present realistic forecasts for the constraining power of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on fundamental cosmological parameters, with particular emphasis on the absolute neutrino mass scale, using full-shape analyses of the galaxy power spectrum. We analyze simulated light cone mock catalogs of emission-line galaxies spanning the redshift range over , designed to reproduce the expected properties of the Roman High Latitude Wide Area Spectroscopic Survey. We perform parameter inference on the galaxy power spectrum multipoles using two complementary theoretical frameworks: a model-dependent approach based on the effective field theory of large-scale structure (EFT of LSS) within cold dark matter (), and a model-independent phenomenological approach that makes no assumptions about the background cosmological model. In the analysis, we find at 95(68)% CL using big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) prior and a broad prior on , which tightens to when Planck priors on , , and are added. Our forecasts show that Roman can additionally constrain , , and with precisions of 1.3%, 4.3%, and 2.9% in line with stage IV galaxy survey measurements and forecasts. In the model-independent analysis, we demonstrate that the phenomenological model can robustly recover unbiased measurements of the angular diameter distance, the Hubble parameter, and the growth of structure across all redshift bins, in the same range of scales as the EFT model, and obtain at 95(68)% CL when Planck priors are included.