First constraints on Non-minimally coupled Natural and Coleman-Weinberg inflation in the light of massive neutrino self-interactions and Planck+BICEP/Keck

In this work, for the first time in literature, we compare the predictions of non-minimally coupled Natural and Coleman-Weinberg potentials in the n_s-r plane against the constraints from the latest cosmological data in an extended ΛCDM model where we include non-standard self-interactions among massive neutrinos, mediated by a heavy scalar or vector boson. For the inflationary potentials, we consider two different formulations in gravity that are non-minimally coupled to the scalar field of the inflaton: Metric and Palatini. We only consider the self-interaction to be present among τ-neutrinos and only at moderate strengths. This is because strong interactions among τ-neutrinos, or any strength self-interaction among electron- and muon-neutrinos, as well as any strength flavor-universal interactions, are strongly disfavoured from particle physics experiments. In terms of cosmological data, we use the latest public CMB datasets from Planck and BICEP/Keck collaborations, along with other data from CMB lensing, BAO, RSD, and SNe Ia luminosity distance measurements. We find that there are some situations where predictions from the inflationary models are ruled out at more than 2σ by the minimal ΛCDM+r model, but they are allowed in the self-interacting neutrino scenario.