I give a theoretical overview of some basic properties of massive neutrinos in these lectures. Particular attention is paid to the origin of neutrino masses, the pattern of lepton flavor mixing, the feature of leptonic CP violation and the electromag
netic properties of massive neutrinos. I highlight the TeV seesaw mechanisms as a possible bridge between neutrino physics and collider physics in the era characterized by the Large Hadron Collider.
In a simple extension of the standard electroweak theory where the phenomenon of lepton flavor mixing is described by a 3x3 unitary matrix V, the electric and magnetic dipole moments of three active neutrinos are suppressed not only by their tiny mas
ses but also by the Glashow-Iliopoulos-Maiani (GIM) mechanism. We show that it is possible to lift the GIM suppression if the canonical seesaw mechanism of neutrino mass generation, which allows V to be slightly non-unitary, is taken into account. In view of current experimental constraints on the non-unitarity of V, we find that the effective electromagnetic transition dipole moments of three light Majorana neutrinos and the rates of their radiative decays can be maximally enhanced by a factor of O(10^2) and a factor of O(10^4), respectively. This important observation reveals an intrinsic and presumably significant correlation between the electromagnetic properties of massive neutrinos and the origin of their small masses.
In view of the latest T2K and MINOS neutrino oscillation data which hint at a relatively large theta_13, we perform a systematic study of the Majorana neutrino mass matrix M_nu with two independent texture zeros. We show that three neutrino masses (m
_1, m_2, m_3) and three CP-violating phases (delta, rho, sigma) can fully be determined from two neutrino mass-squared differences (delta m^2, Delta m^2) and three flavor mixing angles (theta_12, theta_23, theta_13). We find that seven patterns of M_nu (i.e., A_{1,2}, B_{1,2,3,4} and C) are compatible with current experimental data at the 3-sigma level, but the parameter space of each pattern is more strictly constrained than before. We demonstrate that the texture zeros of M_nu are stable against the one-loop quantum corrections, and there exists a permutation symmetry between Patterns A_1 and A_2, B_1 and B_2 or B_3 and B_4. Phenomenological implications of M_nu on the neutrinoless double-beta decay and leptonic CP violation are discussed, and a realization of those texture zeros by means of the Z_n flavor symmetries is illustrated.
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.
In the flavor basis where the mass eigenstates of three charged leptons are identified with their flavor eigenstates, one may diagonalize a 3 X 3 Majorana neutrino mass matrix M_nu by means of the standard parametrization of the 3 X 3 neutrino mixing
matrix V. In this treatment the unphysical phases of M_nu have to be carefully factored out, unless a special phase convention for neutrino fields is chosen so as to simplify M_nu to M_nu without any unphysical phases. We choose this special flavor basis and establish some exact analytical relations between the matrix elements of M_nu M_nu^dag and seven physical parameters --- three neutrino masses (m_1, m_2, m_3), three flavor mixing angles (theta_12, theta_13, theta_23) and the Dirac CP-violating phase (delta). Such results allow us to derive the conditions for the mu-tau flavor symmetry with theta_23 = pi/4 and maximal CP violation with delta = +/- pi/2, which should be useful for discussing specific neutrino mass models. In particular, we show that theta_23 = pi/4 and delta = +/- pi/2 keep unchanged when constant matter effects are taken into account for a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment.
We propose two phenomenological scenarios of lepton mass matrices and show that either of them can exactly give rise to tan^2theta_{13} = m_e/(m_e + 2m_mu), tan^2theta_{23} = m_mu/(m_e + m_mu) and tan^2theta_{12} = (m_e m_2 + 2m_mu m_1)/(m_e m_1 + 2m
_mu m_2) in the standard parametrization of lepton flavor mixing. The third relation, together with current experimental data, predicts a normal but weak hierarchy for the neutrino mass spectrum. We also obtain theta_{13} approx 2.8^circ for the smallest neutrino mixing angle and J approx 1.1% for the Jarlskog invariant of leptonic CP violation, which will soon be tested in the long-baseline reactor and accelerator neutrino oscillation experiments. A seesaw realization of both scenarios is briefly discussed.
Reliable values of quark and lepton masses are important for model building at a fundamental energy scale, such as the Fermi scale M_Z approx 91.2 GeV and the would-be GUT scale Lambda_GUT sim 2 times 10^16 GeV. Using the latest data given by the Par
ticle Data Group, we update the running quark and charged-lepton masses at a number of interesting energy scales below and above M_Z. In particular, we take into account the possible new physics scale (mu sim 1 TeV) to be explored by the LHC and the typical seesaw scales (mu sim 10^9 GeV and mu sim 10^12 GeV) which might be relevant to the generation of neutrino masses. For illustration, the running masses of three light Majorana neutrinos are also calculated. Our up-to-date table of running fermion masses are expected to be very useful for the study of flavor dynamics at various energy scales.
Assuming the Majorana nature of massive neutrinos, we generalize the Friedberg-Lee neutrino mass model to include CP violation in the neutrino mass matrix M_ u. The most general case with all the free parameters of M_ u being complex is discussed. We
show that a favorable neutrino mixing pattern (with theta_12 approx 35.3^circ, theta_23=45^circ, theta_13 eq 0^circ and delta=90^circ) can naturally be derived from M_ u, if it has an approximate or softly-broken mu-tau symmetry. We also point out a different way to obtain the nearly tri-bimaximal neutrino mixing pattern with delta=0^circ and non-vanishing Majorana phases.
