No Arabic abstract
The hierarchical quark masses and small mixing angles are shown to lead to a simple triangular form for the U- and D-type quark mass matrices. In the basis where one of the matrices is diagonal, each matrix element of the other is, to a good approximation, the product of a quark mass and a CKM matrix element. The physical content of a general mass matrix can be easily deciphered in its triangular form. This parameterization could serve as a useful starting point for model building. Examples of mass textures are analyzed using this method.
We show that non-Hermitian and nearest-neighbor-interacting perturbations to the Fritzsch textures of lepton and quark mass matrices can make both of them fit current experimental data very well. In particular, we obtain theta_{23} simeq 45^circ for the atmospheric neutrino mixing angle and predict theta_{13} simeq 3^circ to 6^circ for the smallest neutrino mixing angle when the perturbations in the lepton sector are at the 20% level. The same level of perturbations is required in the quark sector, where the Jarlskog invariant of CP violation is about 3.7 times 10^{-5}. In comparison, the strength of leptonic CP violation is possible to reach about 1.5 times 10^{-2} in neutrino oscillations.
We propose a model for the quark masses and mixings based on an A_4 family symmetry. Three scalar SU(2) doublets form a triplet of A_4. The three left-handed-quark SU(2) doublets are also united in a triplet of A_4. The right-handed quarks are singlets of A_4. The A_4-symmetric scalar potential leads to a vacuum in which two of the three scalar SU(2) doublets have expectation values with equal moduli. Our model makes an excellent fit of the observed |V_ub/V_cb|. The symmetry CP is respected in the charged gauge interactions of the quarks.
We propose a model that all quark and lepton mass matrices have the same zero texture. Namely their (1,1), (1,3) and (3,1) components are zeros. The mass matrices are classified into two types I and II. Type I is consistent with the experimental data in quark sector. For lepton sector, if seesaw mechanism is not used, Type II allows a large $ u_mu - u_tau$ mixing angle. However, severe compatibility with all neutrino oscillation experiments forces us to use the seesaw mechanism. If we adopt the seesaw mechanism, it turns out that Type I instead of II can be consistent with experimental data in the lepton sector too.
We look for all weak bases that lead to texture zeroes in the quark mass matrices and contain a minimal number of parameters in the framework of the standard model. Since there are ten physical observables, namely, six nonvanishing quark masses, three mixing angles and one CP phase, the maximum number of texture zeroes in both quark sectors is altogether nine. The nine zero entries can only be distributed between the up- and down-quark sectors in matrix pairs with six and three texture zeroes or five and four texture zeroes. In the weak basis where a quark mass matrix is nonsingular and has six zeroes in one sector, we find that there are 54 matrices with three zeroes in the other sector, obtainable through right-handed weak basis transformations. It is also found that all pairs composed of a nonsingular matrix with five zeroes and a nonsingular and nondecoupled matrix with four zeroes simply correspond to a weak basis choice. Without any further assumptions, none of these pairs of up- and down-quark mass matrices has physical content. It is shown that all non-weak-basis pairs of quark mass matrices that contain nine zeroes are not compatible with current experimental data. The particular case of the so-called nearest-neighbour-interaction pattern is also discussed.
We perform a systematic analysis of all possible texture zeros in general and symmetric quark mass matrices. Using the values of masses and mixing parameters at the electroweak scale, we identify for both cases the maximally restrictive viable textures. Furthermore, we investigate the predictive power of these textures by applying a numerical predictivity measure recently defined by us. With this measure we find no predictive textures among the viable general quark mass matrices, while in the case of symmetric quark mass matrices most of the 15 maximally restrictive textures are predictive with respect to one or more light quark masses.