Volume 414 - 41st International Conference on High Energy physics (ICHEP2022) - Neutrino Physics
Towards identifying the minimal flavor symmetry behind neutrino oscillations
Z.z. Xing
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Pre-published on: October 31, 2022
Published on:
Abstract
Current neutrino oscillation data indicate that the $3\times 3$ Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata matrix $U$ exhibits a $\mu$-$\tau$ flavor interchange symmetry $|U^{}_{\mu i}| = |U^{}_{\tau i}|$ (for $i = 1, 2, 3$) as a good approximation. In particular, the T2K measurement implies that the maximal neutrino mixing angle $\theta^{}_{23}$ and the CP-violating phase $\delta$ should be close to $\pi/4$ and $-\pi/2$, respectively. Behind these observations lies a minimal flavor symmetry --- the effective Majorana neutrino mass term keeps invariant under the transformations $\nu^{}_{e \rm L} \to (\nu^{}_{e \rm L})^c$, $\nu^{}_{\mu \rm L} \to (\nu^{}_{\tau \rm L})^c$, $\nu^{}_{\tau \rm L} \to (\nu^{}_{\mu \rm L})^c$. Extending this flavor symmetry to the canonical seesaw mechanism, we find that the $R$-matrix describing the strength of weak charged-current interactions of heavy Majorana neutrinos satisfies $|R^{}_{\mu i}| = |R^{}_{\tau i}|$ as a consequence of $|U^{}_{\mu i}| = |U^{}_{\tau i}|$. This result can be used to set a new upper bound,
which is about three orders of magnitude more stringent than before, on the flavor mixing factor associated with the charged-lepton-flavor-violating decay mode $\tau^- \to e^- + \gamma$.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.414.0570
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