Atacama Cosmology Telescope: The persistence of neutrino self-interaction in cosmological measurements

We use data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) DR4 to search for the presence of neutrino self-interaction in the cosmic microwave background. Consistent with prior works, the posterior distributions we find are bimodal, with one mode consistent with ΛCDM and one where neutrinos strongly self-interact. By combining ACT data with large-scale information from WMAP, we find that a delayed onset of neutrino free streaming caused by significantly strong neutrino self-interaction is compatible with these data at the 2-3σ level. As seen in the past, the preference shifts to ΛCDM with the inclusion of Planck data. We determine that the preference for strong neutrino self-interaction is largely driven by angular scales corresponding to 700≲ℓ≲1000 in the ACT E-mode polarization data. This region is expected to be key to discriminate between neutrino self-interacting modes and will soon be probed with more sensitive data.