EFFECTS OF THE NEUTRINO MASS SPLITTING ON THE NONLINEAR MATTER POWER SPECTRUM

We have performed cosmological N-body simulations which include the effect of the masses of the individual neutrino species. The simulations were aimed at studying the effect of different neutrino hierarchies on the matter power spectrum. Compared to the linear theory predictions, we find that nonlinearities enhance the effect of hierarchy on the matter power spectrum at mildly nonlinear scales. The maximum difference between the different hierarchies is about 0.5% for a sum of neutrino masses of 0.1 eV. Albeit this is a small effect, it is potentially measurable from upcoming surveys. In combination with neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments, this opens up the possibility of using the sky to determine if neutrinos are Majorana or Dirac fermions.