Discriminating neutrino mass models using type-II see-saw formula

An attempt has been made to discriminate theoretically the three possible patterns of neutrino mass models,viz., degenerate, inverted hierarchical and normal hierachical models, within the framework of Type-II see-saw formula. From detailed numerical analysis we are able to arrive at a conclusion that the inverted hierarchical model with the same CP phase (referred to as Type [IIA]), appears to be most favourable to survive in nature (and hence most stable), with the normal hierarchical model (Type [III]) and inverted hierarchical model with opposite CP phase (Type [IIB]), follow next. The degenerate models (Types [IA,IB,IC]) are found to be most unstable. The neutrino mass matrices which are obtained using the usual canonical see-saw formula (Type I), and which also give almost good predictions of neutrino masses and mixings consistent with the latest neutrino oscillation data, are re-examined in the presence of the left-handed Higgs triplet within the framework of non-canonical see-saw formula (Type II). We then estimate a parameter (the so-called discriminator) which may represent the minimum degree of suppression of the extra term arising from the presence of left-handed Higgs triplet, so as to restore the good predictions on neutrino masses and mixings already acquired in Type-I see-saw model. The neutrino mass model is said to be favourable and hence stable when its canonical see-saw term dominates over the non-canonical (perturbative) term, and this condition is used here as a criterion for discriminating neutrino mass models.     

LSND reloaded

In view of the recent result from the anti-neutrino run of MiniBooNE, we suggest to repeat the original Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) experiment using Super-Kamiokande, doped with Gadolinium, as detector. Due to the more than 100 times larger detector mass offered by Super-Kamiokande, the neutrino source requires a proton beam power of less than 300 kW at a proton energy around a 1 GeV. A one year run of this setup can corroborate or refute both the LSND and MiniBooNE claims at more than 5σ   confidence level. If a signal is observed, the large size of Super-Kamiokande combined with its good ability to determine the position of an anti-neutrino event allows to establish the characteristic L/E$L/E$-dependence of oscillation.     

A see-saw model of sterile neutrino

If the smallness of the mass of the sterile neutrino is to be explained by the see-saw mechanism, the off-diagonal entries of the mass matrix needs to be protected by some symmetry not far above the electroweak scale. We implement see-saw mechanism in a gauge model based on SU(2)^q_L×SU(2)^l_L×U(1)^q_Y×U(1)^l_Y un-unified gauge group which breaks to SU(2)_L×U(1)_Y at the TeV region via a two-step symmetry breaking chain. The right handed diagonal block is tied to the highest scale up to which the un-unification symmetry holds. The sterile neutrino emerges from a quark-lepton mixed representation of the un-unified group.     

Sterile neutrinos in lepton number and lepton flavor violating decays

We study the contribution of massive dominantly sterile neutrinos, N, to the lepton number and lepton flavor violating semileptonic decays of τ and B, D, K-mesons. We focus on special domains of sterile neutrino masses mN where it is close to its mass-shell. This leads to an enormous resonant enhancement of the decay rates of these processes. This allows us to derive stringent limits on the sterile neutrino mass mN and its mixing UαN with active flavors. We apply a joint analysis of the existing experimental bounds on the decay rates of the studied processes. In contrast to other approaches in the literature our limits are free from ad hoc assumptions on the relative size of the sterile neutrino mixing parameters. We analyze the impact of this sort of assumptions on the extraction of the limits on mN and UαN, and discuss the effect of finite detector size. Special attention was paid to the limits on meson decays with e^±e^± in final state, derived from non-observation of 0νββ-decay. We point out that observation of these decays may, in particular, shed light on the Majorana phases of the neutrino mixing matrix.     

Solar neutrino oscillation phenomenology

This article summarises the status of the solar neutrino oscillation phenomenology at the end of 2002 in the light of the SNO and KamLAND results. We first present the allowed areas obtained from global solar analysis and demonstrate the preference of the solar data towards the large-mixing-angle (LMA) MSW solution. A clear confirmation in favour of the LMA solution comes from the KamLAND reactor neutrino data. The KamLAND spectral data in conjunction with the global solar data further narrows down the allowed LMA region and splits it into two allowed zones a low Δm ² region (low-LMA) and high Δm ² region (high-LMA). We demonstrate through a projected analysis that with an exposure of 3 kton-year (kTy) KamLAND can remove this ambiguity.     

MiniBooNE overview and status

Recent discoveries in the neutrino sector have opened a new frontier in highenergy physics and cosmology. Evidence from neutrino oscillation experiments from around the world indicate that neutrinos oscillate between their different flavours and therefore may have mass. In addition, results from solar and atmospheric neutrino experiments as well as the accelerator neutrino experiment, LSND, cannot all be explained with the three standard model neutrinos. Is this new physics or is there some other explanation? The MiniBooNE experiment presently taking data at Fermilab is designed to address the LSND signal and answer this question. Progress on the MiniBooNE experiment will be presented and prospects for the future will be discussed.     

认识中微子

由于中微子的作用截面很小而不容易被探测和认识，从而人们给予中微子一些独特的性质，如中微子没有确定的内禀宇称，没有静止质量和磁矩或存在所谓中微子振荡现象等。     

Experimental and phenomenological status of neutrino anomalies

The current status of neutrino anomalies is summarized; the KamLAND experiment is described and the recent results of KamLAND presented.     

Precision measurements and tau neutrino physics in a future accelerator neutrino experiment

We investigate prospects of building a future accelerator-based neutrino oscillation experiment in China, including site selection, beam optimization and tau neutrino physics aspects. CP violation, non-unitary mixing and non-standard neutrino interactions are discussed. We simulate neutrino beam setups based on muon and beta decay techniques and compare Chinese laboratory sites by their expected sensitivities. A case study on the Super Proton–Proton Collider and the China JinPing Laboratory is also presented. It is shown that the muon-decay-based beam setup can measure the Dirac CP phase by about 14.2° precision at 1σ CL, whereas non-unitarity can be probed down to ∣α_ij∣ ≲ 0.37 (i ≠ j = 1, 2, 3) and non-standard interactions to $| {epsilon }_{{ell }{ell }^{prime} }^{m}| lesssim $ 0.11 (${ell }ne {ell }^{prime} =e$, μ, τ) at 90% CL, respectively.     

Friedberg-Lee neutrino model with μ-τ reflection symmetry

In this letter, we make an attempt to embed the μ-τ reflection symmetry (which predicts maximal atmospherical mixing angle and Dirac CP phase) in the Friedberg-Lee neutrino model (which employs a translational flavor symmetry and keeps one neutrino mass vanishing) and study the consequences of such a combination.     

Atmospheric neutrinos and discovery of neutrino oscillations

Neutrino oscillation was discovered through studies of neutrinos produced by cosmic-ray interactions in the atmosphere. These neutrinos are called atmospheric neutrinos. They are produced as decay products in hadronic showers resulting from collisions of cosmic rays with nuclei in the atmosphere. Electron-neutrinos and muon-neutrinos are produced mainly by the decay chain of charged pions to muons to electrons. Atmospheric neutrino experiments observed zenith-angle and energy dependent deficit of muon-neutrino events. Neutrino oscillations between muon-neutrinos and tau-neutrinos explain these data well. Neutrino oscillations imply that neutrinos have small but non-zero masses. The small neutrino masses have profound implications to our understanding of elementary particle physics and the Universe. This article discusses the experimental discovery of neutrino oscillations.     

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).     

Earthquake forecast via neutrino tomography

We discuss the possibility of forecasting earthquakes by means of (anti)neutrino tomography. An- tineutrinos emitted from reactors are used as a probe. As the antineutrinos traverse through a region prone to earthquakes, observable variations in the matter effect on the antineutrino oscillation would provide a tomog- raphy of the vicinity of the region. In this preliminary work, we adopt a simplified model for the geometrical profile and matter density in a fault zone. We calculate the survival probability of electron antineutrinos for cases without and with an anomalous accumulation of electrons which can be considered as a clear signal of the coming earthquake, at the geological region with a fault zone, and find that the variation may reach as much as 3% for ν<,e> emitted from a reactor. The case for a ν<,e> beam from a neutrino factory is also investigated, and it is noted that, because of the typically high energy associated with such neutrinos, the oscillation length is too large and the resultant variation is not practically observable. Our conclusion is that with the present reactor facilities and detection techniques, it is still a difficult task to make an earthquake forecast using such a scheme, though it seems to be possible from a theoretical point of view while ignoring some uncertainties. However, with the development of the geology, especially the knowledge about the fault zone, and with the improvement of the detection techniques, etc., there is hope that a medium-term earthquake forecast would be feasible.     

Earthquake forecast via neutrino tomography

We discuss the possibility of forecasting earthquakes by means of (anti)neutrino tomography. Antineutrinos emitted from reactors are used as a probe. As the antineutrinos traverse through a region prone to earthquakes, observable variations in the matter effect on the antineutrino oscillation would provide a tomography of the vicinity of the region. In this preliminary work, we adopt a simplified model for the geometrical profile and matter density in a fault zone. We calculate the survival probability of electron antineutrinos for cases without and with an anomalous accumulation of electrons which can be considered as a clear signal of the coming earthquake, at the geological region with a fault zone, and find that the variation may reach as much as 3% for ν_e emitted from a reactor. The case for a ν_e beam from a neutrino factory is also investigated, and it is noted that, because of the typically high energy associated with such neutrinos, the oscillation length is too large and the resultant variation is not practically observable. Our conclusion is that with the present reactor facilities and detection techniques, it is still a difficult task to make an earthquake forecast using such a scheme, though it seems to be possible from a theoretical point of view while ignoring some uncertainties. However, with the development of the geology, especially the knowledge about the fault zone, and with the improvement of the detection techniques, etc., there is hope that a medium-term earthquake forecast would be feasible.     

The neutrino see-saw in SO(10)

When a predictive and apparently realistic model for the quark mass matrices is extended to the leptons by using an SO(10) framework, it is found that the mass matrix of heavy “right-handed” neutrinos is likely to be close to a singular one. This may result in a variety of interesting patterns for the neutrino masses which are analyzed and compared with experiment.     

Mean square number fluctuation for a fermion source and its dependence on neutrino mass for the universal cosmic neutrino background

Using the general formulation for obtaining chemical potentialμ of an ideal Fermi gas of particles at temperature T, with particle rest mass m₀ and average density 〈N〉/V, the dependence of the mean square number fluctuation 〈ΔN ²〉/V on the particle mass m₀ has been calculated explicitly. The numerical calculations are exact in all cases whether rest mass energym ₀c² is very large (non-relativistic case), very small (ultra-relativistic case) or of the same order as the thermal energy k_BT. Application of our results to the detection of the universal very low energy cosmic neutrino background (CNB), from any of the three species of neutrinos, shows that it is possible to estimate the neutrino mass of these species if from approximate experimental measurements of their momentum distribution one can extract, someday, not only the density 〈N _v〉/V but also the mean square fluctuation 〈Δ _v ² 〉/V. If at the present epoch, the universe is expanding much faster than thermalization rate for CNB, it is shown that our analysis leads to a scaled neutrino massm _v instead of the actual massm _0v .     

Leptogenesis models and neutrino mass constraints

Through leptogenesis, baryogenesis could have the same origin as neutrino masses. We review the various ways of implementing the leptogenesis mechanism. Emphasis is put on the conditions which, in order that this mechanism works, need to be fulfilled by the neutrino masses as well as by the heavy state masses.     

Detecting dark energy in long baseline neutrino oscillations

In this paper, we discuss a possibility of studying properties of dark energy in long baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. We consider two types of models of neutrino dark energy. For one type of models the scalar field is taken to be quintessence-like and for the other phantom-like. In these models the scalar fields couple to the neutrinos to give rise to spatially varying neutrino masses. We will show that the two types of models predict different behaviors of the spatial variation of the neutrino masses inside the Earth and consequently result in different signals in long baseline neutrino oscillation experiments.