We propose that all light fermionic degrees of freedom, including the Standard Model (SM) fermions and all possible light beyond-the-standard-model fields, are chiral with respect to some spontaneously broken abelian gauge symmetry. Hypercharge, for
example, plays this role for the SM fermions. We introduce a new symmetry, $U(1)_{ u}$, for all new light fermionic states. Anomaly cancellations mandate the existence of several new fermion fields with nontrivial $U(1)_{ u}$ charges. We develop a concrete model of this type, for which we show that (i) some fermions remain massless after $U(1)_{ u}$ breaking -- similar to SM neutrinos -- and (ii) accidental global symmetries translate into stable massive particles -- similar to SM protons. These ingredients provide a solution to the dark matter and neutrino mass puzzles assuming one also postulates the existence of heavy degrees of freedom that act as mediators between the two sectors. The neutrino mass mechanism described here leads to parametrically small Dirac neutrino masses, and the model also requires the existence of at least four Dirac sterile neutrinos. Finally, we describe a general technique to write down chiral-fermions-only models that are at least anomaly-free under a $U(1)$ gauge symmetry.
We explore, mostly using data from solar neutrino experiments, the hypothesis that the neutrino mass eigenstates are unstable. We find that, by combining $^8$B solar neutrino data with those on $^7$Be and lower-energy solar neutrinos, one obtains a m
ostly model-independent bound on both the $ u_1$ and $ u_2$ lifetimes. We comment on whether a nonzero neutrino decay width can improve the compatibility of the solar neutrino data with the massive neutrino hypothesis.
We explore realizations of minimal flavour violation (MFV) for the lepton sector. We find that it can be realized within those seesaw models where a separation of the lepton number and lepton flavour violating scales can be achieved, such as type II
and inverse seesaw models. We present in particular a simple implementation of the MFV hypothesis which differs in nature from those previously discussed. It allows to reconstruct the flavour structure of the model from the values of the light neutrino masses and mixing parameters, even in the presence of CP-violating phases. Experimentally reachable predictions for rare processes such as mu --> e gamma are given.
