Observable predictions for massive-neutrino cosmologies with model-independent dark energy

We investigate the bounds on the sum of neutrino masses in a cosmic-acceleration scenario where the equation of state w(z) of dark energy (DE) is constructed in a model-independent way, using a basis of principal components (PCs) that are allowed to cross the phantom barrier w(z)=−1. We find that the additional freedom provided to w(z) means the DE can undo changes in the background expansion induced by massive neutrinos at low redshifts. This has two significant consequences: (1) it leads to a substantial increase in the upper bound for the sum of the neutrino masses (Mν