Non-cyclic phases for neutrino oscillations in quantum field theory

We show the presence of non-cyclic phases for oscillating neutrinos in the context of quantum field theory. Such phases carry information about the non-perturbative vacuum structure associated with the field mixing. By subtracting the condensate contribution of the flavor vacuum, the previously studied quantum mechanics geometric phase is recovered.     

The flavor problem and discrete symmetries

In this Letter we propose a multi-Higgs extension of the standard model with Abelian and non-Abelian discrete symmetries in which the mass matrices of the charged fermions obtained from renormalizable interactions are diagonal. However, non-diagonal contributions, that are important for obtaining the CKM matrix in the quark sector, arise from non-renormalizable dimension five interactions. Active neutrinos acquire mass only from non-renormalizable interactions, the non-diagonal entries arising through dimension five operators, while the diagonal entries comes from dimension six operators. Realistic mixing matrices in the neutrino and the quarks sectors are obtained.     

Mixing angles of quarks and leptons in quantum field theory

Arguments coming from Quantum Field Theory are supplemented with a 1-loop perturbative calculation to settle the non-unitarity of mixing matrices linking renormalized mass eigenstates to bare flavor states for non-degenerate coupled fermions. We simultaneously diagonalize the kinetic and mass terms and counterterms in the renormalized Lagrangian. SU(2) _L gauge invariance constrains the mixing matrix in charged currents of renormalized mass states, for example the Cabibbo matrix, to stay unitary. Leaving aside CP violation, we observe that the mixing angles exhibit, within experimental uncertainty, a very simple breaking pattern of SU(2) _f horizontal symmetry linked to the algebra of weak neutral currents, the origin of which presumably lies beyond the Standard Model. It concerns on the one hand the three quark mixing angles; on the other hand a neutrino-like pattern in which θ ₂₃ is maximal and tan (2θ ₁₂)=2. The Cabibbo angle fulfills the condition tan (2θ _c )=1/2 and θ ₁₂ for neutrinos satisfies accordingly the “quark–lepton complementarity condition” θ _c +θ ₁₂=π/4. θ ₁₃=±5.7⋅10⁻³ are the only values obtained for the third neutrino mixing angle that lie within present experimental bounds. Flavor symmetries, their breaking by a non-degenerate mass spectrum, and their entanglement with the gauge symmetry, are scrutinized; the special role of flavor rotations as a very mildly broken symmetry of the Standard Model is outlined.     

Multiple seesaw mechanisms of neutrino masses at the TeV scale

In pursuit of a balance between theoretical naturalness and experimental testability, we propose two classes of multiple seesaw mechanisms at the TeV scale to understand the origin of tiny neutrino masses. They are novel extensions of the canonical and double seesaw mechanisms, respectively, by introducing even and odd numbers of gauge-singlet fermions and scalars. It is thanks to a proper implementation of the global U(1)×Z_2N$\mathrm{U}(1)\times {\mathbb{Z}}_{2N}$ symmetry that the overall neutrino mass matrix in either class has a suggestive nearest-neighbor-interaction pattern. We briefly discuss possible consequences of these TeV-scale seesaw scenarios, which can hopefully be explored in the upcoming Large Hadron Collider and precision neutrino experiments, and present a simple but instructive example of model building.     

Possible new interactions of neutrino and the KATRIN experiment

We analyse the possible role of new interactions of neutrino in the forthcoming tritium beta decay experiment KATRIN aimed at detecting the neutrino mass with the sensitivity of 0.3–0.2 eV. It is shown that under certain circumstances the standard procedure of data analysis would have to be modified by the introduction of an extra parameter describing the strength of the new interactions. Our model simulations show that the modified procedure may improve the quality of the fit compared with the standard case. Ignoring the possibility of new interactions may lead to a systematic error in the neutrino mass determination.     

Point-form quantum field theory

We examine canonical quantization of relativistic field theories on the forward hyperboloid, a Lorentz-invariant surface of the form x_μx^μ = τ². This choice of quantization surface implies that all components of the 4-momentum operator are affected by interactions (if present), whereas rotation and boost generators remain interaction free—a feature characteristic of Dirac’s “point-form” of relativistic dynamics. Unlike previous attempts to quantize fields on space-time hyperboloids, we keep the usual plane-wave expansion of the field operators and consider evolution of the system generated by the 4-momentum operator. We verify that the Fock-space representations of the Poincaré generators for free scalar and spin-1/2 fields look the same as for equal-time quantization. Scattering is formulated for interacting fields in a covariant interaction picture and it is shown that the familiar perturbative expansion of the S-operator is recovered by our approach. An appendix analyzes special distributions, integrals over the forward hyperboloid, that are used repeatedly in the paper.     

Grand Unified Yukawa Matrix Ansatz： The Standard Model Fermion Mass, Quark Mixing and CP Violation Parameters

We propose a new mass matrix ansatz： At the grand unified （GU） scale, the standard model （SM） Yukawa coupling matrix elements are integer powers, of the square root of the GU gauge coupling constant ε ≡√αGU, multiplied by order unity random complex numbers. It relates the hierarchy of the SM fermion masses and quark mixings to the gauge coupling constants, greatly reducing the SM parameters, and can give good fitting results of the SM fermion mass, quark mixing and CP violation parameters. This is a neat but very effective ansatz.     

A novel formulation of Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa matrix renormalization

We present a gauge-independent quark mass counterterm for the on-shell renormalization of the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa (CKM) matrix in the Standard Model that is directly expressed in terms of the Lorentz-invariant self-energy functions, and automatically satisfies the hermiticity constraints of the mass matrix. It is very convenient for practical applications and leads to a gauge-independent CKM counterterm matrix that preserves unitarity and satisfies other highly desirable theoretical properties, such as flavor democracy.     

Right unitarity triangles,stable CP-violating phases and approximate quark–lepton complementarity

Current experimental data indicate that two unitarity triangles of the CKM quark mixing matrix V   are almost the right triangles with α≈90°$\alpha \approx 90°$. We highlight a very suggestive parametrization of V and show that its CP-violating phase ? is nearly equal to α   (i.e., ?−α≈1.1°$?-\alpha \approx 1.1°$). Both ? and α   are stable against the renormalizaton-group evolution from the electroweak scale MZ$M_Z$ to a superhigh energy scale MX$M_X$ or vice versa, and thus it is impossible to obtain α=90°$\alpha =90°$ at MZ$M_Z$ from ?=90°$?=90°$ at MX$M_X$. We conjecture that there might also exist a maximal CP-violating phase φ≈90°$\phi \approx 90°$ in the MNS lepton mixing matrix U. The approximate quark–lepton complementarity relations, which hold in the standard parametrizations of V and U, can also hold in our particular parametrizations of V and U   simply due to the smallness of |V_ub|$|V_{ub}|$ and |V_e3|$|V_{e3}|$.     

Neutrino mixing discriminates geo-reactor models

Geo-reactor models suggest the existence of natural nuclear reactors at different deep-earth locations with loosely defined output power. Reactor fission products undergo beta decay with the emission of electron antineutrinos, which routinely escape the earth. Neutrino mixing distorts the energy spectrum of the electron antineutrinos. Characteristics of the distorted spectrum observed at the earth's surface could specify the location of a geo-reactor, discriminating the models and facilitating more precise power measurement.     

A4-based tri-bimaximal mixing within inverse and linear seesaw schemes

We consider tri-bimaximal lepton mixing within low-scale seesaw schemes where light neutrino masses arise from TeV scale physics, potentially accessible at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Two examples are considered, based on the A₄$A_4$ flavor symmetry realized within the inverse or the linear seesaw mechanisms. Both are highly predictive so that in both the light neutrino sector effectively depends only on three mass parameters and one Majorana phase, with no CP violation in neutrino oscillations. We find that the linear seesaw leads to a lower bound for neutrinoless double beta decay while the inverse seesaw does not. The models also lead to potentially sizeable decay rates for lepton flavor violating processes, tightly related by the assumed flavor symmetry.     

Testing non-standard CP violation in neutrino propagation

Non-standard physics which can be described by effective four fermion interactions may be an additional source of CP violation in the neutrino propagation. We discuss the detectability of such a CP violation at a neutrino factory. We assume the current baseline setup of the international design study of a neutrino factory (IDS-NF) for the simulation. We find that the CP violation from certain non-standard interactions is, in principle, detectable significantly below their current bounds – even if there is no CP violation in the standard oscillation framework. Therefore, a new physics effect might be mis-interpreted as the canonical Dirac CP violation, and a possibly even more exciting effect might be missed.     

Nonlocal regularization and spontaneously broken abelian gauge theories for an arbitrary gauge parameter

We study the nonlocal regularization for the case of a spontaneously broken abelian gauge theory in the R-gauge with an arbitrary gauge parameter . We consider a simple abelian-Higgs model with chiral couplings as an example. We show that if we apply the nonlocal regularization procedure (to construct a nonlocal theory with FINITE mass parameter) to the spontaneously broken R-gauge Lagrangian, using the quadratic forms as appearing in this Lagrangian, we find that a physical observable in this model, an analogue of the muon anomalous magnetic moment, evaluated to order O [g²] does indeed show -dependence. We then apply the modified form of nonlocal regularization that was recently advanced and studied for the unbroken non-abelian gauge theories and discuss the resulting WT identities and -independence of the S-matrix elements.     

The entropy bound for local quantum field theory

We investigate the entropy bound for local quantum field theory in this Letter. Both the bosonic and fermionic fields confined to an asymptotically flat space–time are examined. By imposing the non-gravitational collapse condition, we find both of them are limited by the same entropy bound A3/4$A^{3/4}$, where A is the boundary area of the region where the quantum fields are contained in. The gap between this entropy bound and the holographic entropy has been verified.