Neutrino self-interactions in post-reionization era: Lyman-$\alpha$, 21-cm and cross-spectra
Abstract
Neutrino self-interactions delay the onset of free-streaming in the early universe, leaving distinct, scale-dependent signatures on the matter power spectrum. We investigate these signatures in post-reionization 21-cm intensity mapping and the Lyman- (Ly) forest at redshifts --, and forecast the constraints achievable with upcoming surveys using Fisher matrix analysis. Modeling neutrino self-interactions through an effective four-fermion parameterization with coupling , we compute modifications to the Ly and 21-cm auto- and cross-power spectra for both strongly interacting (SI, ) and moderately interacting (MI, ) scenarios. We then combine these with forecasts for a representative next-generation cosmic microwave background (CMB) mission to evaluate the capabilities of SKA1-Mid and PUMA. We find that the Ly--21-cm cross-correlation provides a systematics-resilient probe of the interaction signal, and decisively breaks the degeneracy between the primordial scalar power spectrum amplitude () and that limits CMB only analysis, particularly for the SI mode. Furthermore, the CMB+PUMA combination emerges as the optimal survey configuration for both regimes, reaching 1 constraints of on for the SI mode and for the MI mode. Compared to the CMB-only baseline, this represents an improvement of approximately one order of magnitude for the SI mode, and nearly two orders of magnitude for the MI mode. We show that this conclusion holds uniformly over the full range of coupling strengths from to .
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.15287,
title = {Neutrino self-interactions in post-reionization era: Lyman-$\alpha$, 21-cm and cross-spectra},
author = {Sourav Pal and Supratik Pal},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.15287},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
40 pages, 15 figures, 3 tables. Comments are welcome