Cold + Hot Dark Matter After Super-Kamiokande

Abstract

The recent atmospheric neutrino data from Super-Kamiokande provide strong evidence of neutrino oscillations and therefore of non-zero neutrino mass. These data imply a lower limit on the hot dark matter (i.e., light neutrino) contribution to the cosmological density $Ω_ν>~ 0.001$ --- almost as much as that of all the stars in the universe --- and permit higher $Ω_ν$. The ``standard'' COBE-normalized critical-matter-density (i.e., $Ω_m=1$) Cold Dark Matter (CDM) model has too much power on small scales. But adding to CDM neutrinos with mass of about 5 eV, corresponding to $Ω_ν\approx 0.2$, results in a much improved fit to data on the nearby galaxy and cluster distribution. Indeed, the resulting Cold + Hot Dark Matter (CHDM) cosmological model is arguably the most successful $Ω_m=1$ model for structure formation. However, other recent data has begun to make the case for $Ω_m <~ 0.6$ fairly convincing. In light of all this new data, we reconsider whether cosmology still provides evidence favoring neutrino mass of a few eV in flat models with cosmological constant $Ω_Λ= 1 - Ω_m$. We find that the possible improvement of the low-$Ω_m$ flat (LCDM) cosmological models with the addition of light neutrinos appears to be rather limited.