No Arabic abstract
Nonstandard interactions (NSIs), possible subleading effects originating from new physics beyond the Standard Model, may affect the propagation of neutrinos and eventually contribute to measurements of neutrino oscillations. Besides this, $ mu-tau $ reflection symmetry, naturally predicted by non-Abelian discrete flavor symmetries, has been very successful in explaining the observed leptonic mixing patterns. In this work, we study the combined effect of both. We present an $S_4$ flavor model with $mu-tau$ reflection symmetry realized in both neutrino masses and NSIs. Under this formalism, we perform a detailed study for the upcoming neutrino experiments DUNE and T2HK. Our simulation results show that under the $mu-tau $ reflection symmetry, NSI parameters are further constrained and the mass ordering sensitivity is less affected by the presence of NSIs.
We investigate the consequences of $mu-tau$ reflection symmetry in presence of a light sterile neutrino for the $3+1$ neutrino mixing scheme. We discuss the implications of total $mu-tau$ reflection symmetry as well partial $mu-tau$ reflection symmetry. For the total $mu-tau$ reflection symmetry we find values of $theta_{23}$ and $delta$ remains confined near $pi/4$ and $pm pi/2$ respectively. The current allowed region for $theta_{23}$ and $delta$ in case of inverted hierarchy lies outside the area preferred by the total $mu-tau$ reflection symmetry. However, interesting predictions on the neutrino mixing angles and Dirac CP violating phases are obtained considering partial $mu-tau$ reflection symmetry. We obtain predictive correlations between the neutrino mixing angle $theta_{23}$ and Dirac CP phase $delta$ and study the testability of these correlations at the future long baseline experiment DUNE. We find that while the imposition of $mu-tau$ reflection symmetry in the first column admit both normal and inverted neutrino mass hierarchy, demanding $mu-tau$ reflection symmetry for the second column excludes the inverted hierarchy. Interestingly, the sterile mixing angle $theta_{34}$ gets tightly constrained considering the $mu-tau$ reflection symmetry in the fourth column. We also study consequences of $mu-tau$ reflection symmetry for the Majorana phases and neutrinoless double beta decay.
We embed $mu-tau$ reflection symmetry into the minimal seesaw formalism, where two right-handed neutrinos are added to the Standard Model of particle physics. Assuming that both the left- and right-handed neutrino fields transform under $mu-tau$ reflection symmetry, we obtain the required forms of the neutrino Dirac mass matrix and the Majorana mass matrix for the right-handed neutrinos. To investigate the neutrino phenomenology at low energies, we first consider the breaking of $mu-tau$ reflection symmetry due to the renormalization group running, and then systematically study various breaking schemes by introducing explicit breaking terms at high energies.
We discuss the viability of the $mu$--$tau$ interchange symmetry imposed on the neutrino mass matrix in the flavor space. Whereas the exact symmetry is shown to lead to textures of completely degenerate spectrum which is incompatible with the neutrino oscillation data, introducing small perturbations into the preceding textures, inserted in a minimal way, lead however to four deformed textures representing an approximate $mu$--$tau$ symmetry. We motivate the form of these `minimal textures, which disentangle the effects of the perturbations, and present some concrete realizations assuming exact $mu$--$tau$ at the Lagrangian level but at the expense of adding new symmetries and matter fields. We find that all these deformed textures are capable to accommodate the experimental data, and in all types of neutrino mass hierarchies, in particular the non-vanishing value for the smallest mixing angle.
We study the consequences of the $Z_2$-symmetry behind the $mu$--$tau$ universality in neutrino mass matrix. We then implement this symmetry in the type-I seesaw mechanism and show how it can accommodate all sorts of lepton mass hierarchies and generate enough lepton asymmetry to interpret the observed baryon asymmetry in the universe. We also show how a specific form of a high-scale perturbation is kept when translated via the seesaw into the low scale domain, where it can accommodate the neutrino mixing data. We finally present a realization of the high scale perturbed texture through addition of matter and extra exact symmetries.
Inspired by the neutrino oscillations data, we consider the exact $mu-tau$ symmetry, implemented at the level of the neutrino mass matrix, as a good initial framework around which to study and describe neutrino phenomenology. Working in the diagonal basis for the charged leptons, we deviate from $mu-tau$ symmetry by just modifying the phases of the neutrino mass matrix elements. This deviation is enough to allow for a non-vanishing neutrino mixing entry $|V_{e3}|$ (i.e. $theta_{13}$) but it also gives a very stringent (and eventually falsifiable) prediction for the atmospheric neutrino mixing element $|V_{mu3}|$ as a function of $|V_{e3}|$. The breaking by phases is characterized by a single phase and is shown to lead to interesting lower bounds on the allowed mass of the lightest neutrino depending on the ordering of neutrino masses (normal or inverted) and on the value of the Dirac ${cal CP}$ violating phase $delta_{CP}$. The allowed parameter space for the effective Majorana neutrino mass $m_{ee}$ is also shown to be non-trivially constrained.