Impact of the damping tail on neutrino mass constraints

Model-independent mass limits assess the robustness of current cosmological measurements of the neutrino mass scale. Consistency between high-multipole and low-multiple cosmic microwave background observations measuring such scale further valuates the constraining power of present data. We derive here up-to-date limits on neutrino masses and abundances exploiting either the Data Release 4 of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) or the South Pole Telescope polarization measurements from SPT-3G, envisaging different nonminimal background cosmologies and marginalizing over them. By combining these high- observations with supernova Ia, baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), redshift space distortions (RSD) and a prior on the reionization optical depth from WMAP data, we find that the marginalized bounds are competitive with those from Planck analyses. We obtain m_<0. 139 eV and N₄₅₅=2. 820. 25 in a dark energy quintessence scenario, both at 95% CL. These limits translate into m_<0. 20 eV and N₄₅₅=2. 79-₀. ₂₈^+0. 30 after marginalizing over a plethora of well-motivated fiducial models. Our findings reassess both the strength and the reliability of cosmological neutrino mass constraints.