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

Author(s)
Walter Grimus, Patrick Otto Ludl
Abstract

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.

Organisation(s)
Particle Physics
Journal
Physics Letters. Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics
Volume
700
Pages
356-361
No. of pages
6
ISSN
0370-2693
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2011.05.029
Publication date
2011
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
103036 Theoretical physics, 103012 High energy physics, 103034 Particle physics
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/maximal-atmospheric-neutrino-mixing-from-texture-zeros-and-quasidegenerate-neutrino-masses(718728fe-c1df-40f0-9994-3ae57e57d9fc).html