No Arabic abstract
If the sterile neutrino mass matrix in an otherwise conventional seesaw model has a rank less than the number of flavors, it is possible to produce pseudo-Dirac neutrinos. In a two-flavor, sterile rank 1 case, we demonstrate analytic conditions for large active mixing induced by the existence of (and coupling to) the sterile neutrino components. For the three-flavor, rank 1 case, ``3+2 scenarios with large mixing also devolve naturally as we show by numerical examples. We observe that, in this approach, small mass differences can develop naturally without any requirement that masses themselves are small. Additionally, we show that significant three channel mixing and limited experimental resolution can combine to produce extracted two channel mixing parameters at variance with the actual values.
Starting with high scale mixing unification hypothesis, we investigate the renormalization group evolution of mixing parameters and masses for Dirac type neutrinos. Following this hypothesis, the PMNS mixing angles and phase are taken to be identical to the CKM ones at a unifying high scale. Then, they are evolved to a low scale using renormalization-group equations. The notable feature of this hypothesis is that renormalization group evolution with quasi-degenerate mass pattern can explain largeness of leptonic mixing angles even for Dirac neutrinos. The renormalization group evolution naturally results in a non-zero and small value of leptonic mixing angle $theta_{13}$. One of the important predictions of this work is that the mixing angle $theta_{23}$ is non-maximal and lies only in the second octant. We also derive constraints on the allowed parameter range for the SUSY breaking and unification scales for which this hypothesis works. The results are novel and can be tested by present and future experiments.
If neutrinos are Dirac, the conditions for cobimaximal mixing, i.e. $theta_{23}=pi/4$ and $delta_{CP}=pm pi/2$ in the $3 times 3$ neutrino mixing matrix, are derived. One example with $A_4$ symmetry and radiative Dirac neutrino masses is presented.
The addition of gauge singlet fermions to the Standard Model Lagrangian renders the neutrinos massive and allows one to explain all that is experimentally known about neutrino masses and lepton mixing by varying the values of the Majorana mass parameters M for the gauge singlets and the neutrino Yukawa couplings. Here we explore the region of parameter space where M values are much smaller than the neutrino Dirac masses. In this region, neutrinos are pseudo-Dirac fermions. We find that current solar data constrain M values to be less than at least 1E-9 eV, and discuss the sensitivity of future experiments to tiny gauge singlet fermion masses. We also discuss a useful basis for analyzing pseudo-Dirac neutrino mixing effects. In particular, we identify a simple relationship between elements of M and the induced enlarged mixing matrix and new mass-squared differences. These allow one to directly relate bounds on the new mass-squared differences to bounds on the singlet fermion Majorana masses.
In the inverse seesaw extension of the standard model, supersymmetric or non-supersymmetric, while the light left-handed neutrinos are Majorana, the heavy right-handed neutrinos are pseudo-Dirac fermions. We show how one of these latter category of particles can contribute quite significantly to neutrinoless double beta decay. The neutrino virtuality momentum is found to play a crucial role in the non-standard contributions leading to the prediction of the pseudo-Dirac fermion mass in the range of $120, {MeV}-500, {MeV}$. When the Dirac neutrino mass matrix in the inverse seesaw formula is similar to the up-quark mass matrix, characteristic of high scale quark-lepton symmetric origin, the predicted branching ratios for lepton flavor violating decays are also found to be closer to the accessible range of ongoing experiments.
It is shown that the specific charge conjugation transformation used to define the Majorana fermions in the conventional seesaw mechanism, namely $( u_{R})^{C}=Cbar{ u_{R}}^{T}$ for a chiral fermion $ u_{R}$ (and similarly for $ u_{L}$), is a hidden symmetry associated with CP symmetry, and thus it formally holds independently of the P- and C-violating terms in the CP invariant Lagrangian and it is in principle applicable to charged leptons and quarks as well. This hidden symmetry, however, is not supported by a consistent unitary operator and thus it leads to mathematical (operatorial) ambiguities. When carefully examined, it also fails as a classical transformation law in a Lorentz invariant field theory. To distinguish it from the standard charge conjugation symmetry, we suggest for it the name of pseudo C-symmetry. The pseudo C-symmetry is effective to identify Majorana neutrinos analogously to the classical Majorana condition. The analysis of CP breaking in weak interactions is performed using the conventional CP transformation, which is defined independently of the pseudo C-transformation, in the seesaw model after mass diagonalization. A way to ensure an operatorially consistent formulation of C-conjugation is to formulate the seesaw scheme by invoking a relativistic analogue of the Bogoliubov transformation.