Testing the maximal nature of muon neutrino flavor mixing

The small difference between the survival probabilities of muon neutrino and antineutrino beams, traveling through Earth matter in a long baseline experiment such as MINOS, is shown to be an important measure of any possible deviation from maximality in the flavor mixing of those states.     

Knitting neutrino mass textures with or without Tri-Bi maximal mixing

The solar and baseline neutrino oscillation data suggest bimaximal neutrino mixing among the first two generations, and trimaximal mixing between all three neutrino flavors. It has been conjectured that this indicates the existence of an underlying symmetry for the leptonic fermion mass textures. The experimentally measured quantities, however, are associated to the latter indirectly and in a rather complicated way through the mixing matrices of the charged leptons and neutrinos. Motivated by these facts, we derive exact analytical expressions which directly link the charged lepton and neutrino mass and mixing parameters to measured quantities and obtain constraints on the parameter space. We discuss deviations from Tri-Bi mixing matrices and present minimal extensions of the Harrison, Perkins and Scott matrices capable of interpreting all neutrino data.     

Constraints on neutrino mixing

We explore the implications of imposing the constraint that two neutrino flavors (which for definiteness we take to be ν_μ and ν_τ) are similarly coupled to the mass basis in addition to the unitarity constraints. We allow three active and an arbitrary number of sterile neutrinos. We show that in this scheme one of the mass eigenstates decouples from the problem, reducing the dimension of the flavor space by one. This result allows significant simplification in the treatment of matter-enhanced neutrino transformation where multiple flavors and level crossings are involved.     

Condensed matter effects in the solar neutrino problem

In addition to our earlier corrections to fusion cross sections, we proposed that previously overlooked condensed matter effects (CME) can help to account for the missing solar neutrino flux. There are three important CME. One is due to a reduction in collision frequency due to an exchange of kinetic and potential energies in collision processes. Another is an excluded volume effect. The third is a shadowing effect due to the presence of spectator species which do not participate in fusion. These CME become appreciable in the high densities encountered in stellar media where they significantly affect fusion rates, since the solar core plasma cannot accurately be described as a collisionless ideal gas. Contrary to Bahcall and Gould (1993), we do not violate Liouville's theorem, the Maxwellian distribution, nor thermodynamics in our proposed solution to the solar neutrino problem.     

Lepton mixing and neutrino oscillations

The present article is a review of phenomena connected with neutrino oscillations. Mixing of two neutrinos (Majorana as well as Dirac) with masses m₁ and m₂ is considered in detail. It is shown that the hypothesis of lepton mixing is not in contradiction with the existing data if |m₁²?m₂²| ? 1 (eV)². Possible experiments designed to reveal neutrino oscillations at reactor, meson factory and high energy accelerator facilities are considered. In such experiments oscillation might be found if $\text{|m}{}_1{}^2\text{?m}{}_2{}^2\text{| ? 0.01}\text{(eV)}{}^2$. The possibilities of searching for oscillations by experiments on cosmic ray neutrinos and especially on solar neutrinos are discussed in detail. The last experiments have an incredible high sensitivity from the point of view of testing the lepton mixing hypothesis (oscillation effects might be observable if $\text{|m}{}_1{}^2\text{?m}{}_2{}^2\text{| ? 10}{}^{\mathrm{?12}}\text{(eV)}{}^2$). The “solar neutrino puzzle” is also discussed from the point of view of lepton mixing. Neutrino oscillations are considered then in the case where in nature there exist N ? 2 neutrino types.In conclusion the case of heavy lepton mixing is considered. It is shown that in a concrete scheme with right-handed currents, the probabilities of such processes as μ → eγ, μ → 3e etc. can be close to existing experimental upper limits, provided the heavy lepton masses are of an order of a few GeV, whereas the probabilities of the above processes are entirely negligible if only neutrinos are mixed.     

Supernova constraints on neutrino mass and mixing

In this article I review the constraints on neutrino mass and mixing coming from type-II supernovae. The bounds obtained on these parameters from shock reheating, r-process nucleosynthesis and from SN1987A are discussed. Given the current constraints on neutrino mass and mixing the effect of oscillations of neutrinos from a nearby supernova explosion in future detectors will also be discussed.     

Parametrizing and rephasing neutrino mixing

Neutrino mixing in Standard Model extensions, both renormalizable and effective, with arbitrary numbers of singlet and left-handed doublet neutrinos is investigated in a systematic fashion. The charged and neutral (Z-boson-and Higgs-boson-mediated) lepton currents are written under a general Majorana condition, and the independence of observables from the choice of condition, rephasing invariance, is studied. A parametrization of the neutrino mixing matrices in the doublet-singlet factorized form is developed. Its relationship with the see saw mechanism is shown in the limit of small doublet-singlet mixing. The structure of the mixing matrices relevant to neutrino-oscillation experiments is explicated.     

Constraints on three flavor neutrino mixing

We summarize the constraints on three flavor neutrino mixing coming from data. We first map out the allowed region in the three neutrino parameter space using solar and atmospheric neutrino data. We then incorporate the results of reactor and long baseline experiments in our analysis and show that the parameter space is drastically reduced. We conclude by pointing out that the results of Borexino and SNO will further help in constraining the parameter space.     

Theory of neutrino masses and mixing

We motivate the usage of finite groups as symmetries of the Lagrangian. After a presentation of basic group-theoretical concepts, we introduce the notion of characters and character tables in the context of irreducible representations and discuss their applications. We exemplify these theoretical concepts with the groups S ₄ and A ₄. Finally, we discuss the relation between tensor products of irreducible representations and Yukawa couplings and describe a model for tri-bimaximal lepton mixing based on A ₄.     

Twisted flavors and tribimaximal neutrino mixing

A new framework for handling flavor symmetry breaking in the neutrino sector is discussed where the source of symmetry breaking is traced to the global property of right-handed neutrinos in extra-dimensional space. Light neutrino phenomenology has rich and robust predictions such as the tribimaximal form of generation mixing, controlled mass spectrum, and no need of flavor mixing couplings in the theory.     

Projection quantum mechanics and neutrino mixing

Physics of Atomic Nuclei - The theory of neutrino oscillations rests on the assumption, that the interaction basis and the physical (mass) basis of neutrino states are different. Therefore neutrino...     

Maximal atmospheric neutrino mixing from texture zeros and quasi-degenerate neutrino masses

It is well known that, in the basis where the charged-lepton mass matrix is diagonal, there are seven cases of two texture zeros in Majorana neutrino mass matrices that are compatible with all experimental data. We show that two of these cases, namely B₃ and B₄ in the classification of Frampton, Glashow and Marfatia, are special in the sense that they automatically lead to near-maximal atmospheric neutrino mixing in the limit of a quasi-degenerate neutrino mass spectrum. This property holds true irrespective of the values of the solar and reactor mixing angles because, for these two cases, in the limit of a quasi-degenerate spectrum, the second and third row of the lepton mixing matrix are, up to signs, approximately complex-conjugate to each other. Moreover, in the same limit the aforementioned cases also develop a maximal CP-violating CKM-type phase, provided the reactor mixing angle is not too small.     

Measurement of day and night neutrino energy spectra at SNO and constraints on neutrino mixing parameters

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) has measured day and night solar neutrino energy spectra and rates. For charged current events, assuming an undistorted 8B spectrum, the night minus day rate is 14.0%+/-6.3%(+1.5%)(-1.4%) of the average rate. If the total flux of active neutrinos is additionally constrained to have no asymmetry, the nu(e) asymmetry is found to be 7.0%+/-4.9%(+1.3%)(-1.2%). A global solar neutrino analysis in terms of matter-enhanced oscillations of two active flavors strongly favors the large mixing angle solution.     

Tri-bimaximal mixing and the neutrino oscillation data

Following recent results from the SNO solar neutrino experiment and the K2K long-baseline neutrino experiment, the combined existing data on neutrino oscillations now point strongly to a specific form for the lepton mixing matrix, with effective bimaximal mixing of ν_μ and ν_τ at the atmospheric scale and effective trimaximal mixing for ν_e with ν_μ and ν_τ at the solar scale (hence ‘tri-bimaximal’ mixing). We give simple mass-matrices leading to tri-bimaximal mixing, and discuss its relation to the Fritzsch–Xing democratic ansatz.     

Possible existence of massive neutrino halos

A simple analysis of parameters for a system of self-gravitating massive neutrinos is presented. The possibility of massive halos in galaxies and clusters of galaxies is discussed.     

Associated neutrino mixing and neutrino oscillations in left-right electro weak gauge theory

The rare electromagnetic decay of a neutral pseudoscalar meson into a lepton pair is calculated in a bound state quark model. For heavy mesons, the leading QCD diagram is argued to be dominant allowing higher order QCD corrections to be neglected for the branching ratio of this decay to the two-photon decay. The experimentally interesting case of pion decay is treated separately, and the rates for competing processes (weak neutral currents, axions, technicolour ...) are estimated. We conclude that existing data may well allow for such contributions.     

Bounds on neutrino mixing with exotic singlet neutrinos

We examine the effects of mixing induced non-diagonal light-heavy neutrino weak neutral currents on the amplitude for the process (with a=e, μ or τ). By imposing constraint that the amplitude should not exceed the perturbative unitarity limit at high energy , we obtain bounds on light-heavy neutrino mixing parameter sin² where is the mixing angle. In the case of one heavy neutrino (mass mξ) or mass degenerate heavy neutrinos, for Λ=1 TeV, no bound is obtained for mξ<0.50 TeV. However, sin² ≤3.8 × 10⁻⁶ for mξ=5 TeV and sin ≤6.0 × 10⁻⁸ for mξ=10 TeV. For Λ=∞, no constraint is obtained for mξ<0.99 TeV and sin² ≤3.8 × 10⁻² (for mξ=5 TeV) and sin² ≤9.6 × 10⁻³ (for mξ=10 TeV).