A Biased Review of Tau Neutrino Mass Limits

Abstract

After a quick review of astrophysically relevant limits, I present a summary of MeV scale tau neutrino mass limits derived from accelerator based experiments. I argue that the current published limits appear to be too consistent, and that we therefore cannot conclude that the tau neutrino mass limit is as low as usually claimed. I provide motivational arguments calling into question the assumed statistical properties of the usual maxumum likelihood estimators, and provide a prescription for deriving a more robust and understandable mass limit.