Minimal archi-texture for neutrino mass matrices

The origin of the observed masses and mixing angles of quarks and leptons is one of imperative subjects in and beyond the standard model. Toward a deeper understanding of flavor structure, we investigate in this paper the minimality of fermion mass (Yukawa) matrices in unified theory. That is, the simplest matrix form is explored in light of the current experimental data for quarks and leptons, including the recent measurements of quark CP violation and neutrino oscillations. Two types of neutrino mass schemes are particularly analyzed; (i) Majorana masses of left-handed neutrinos with unspecified mechanism and (ii) Dirac and Majorana masses introducing three right-handed neutrinos. As a result, new classes of neutrino mass matrices are found to be consistent to the low-energy experimental data and high-energy unification hypothesis. For distinctive phenomenological implications of the minimal fermion mass textures, we discuss flavor-violating decay of charged leptons, the baryon asymmetry of the universe via thermal leptogenesis, neutrino-less double beta decay, and low-energy leptonic CP violation.Comment: 37 pages, 6 figure

Relation between CKM and MNS Matrices Induced by Bi-Maximal Rotations in the Seesaw Mechanism

It is found that the seesaw mechanism not only explains the smallness of neutrino masses but also accounts for the large mixing angles simultaneously, even if the unification of the neutrino Dirac mass matrix with that of up-type quark sector is realized. In this mechanism, we show that the mixing matrix of the Dirac-type mass matrix gets extra rotations from the diagonalization of Majorana mass matrix. Assuming that the mixing angles to diagonalize the Majorana mass matrix are extremely small, we find that the large mixing angles of leptonic sector found in atmospheric and long baseline reactor neutrino oscillation experiments can be explained by these extra rotations. We also find that provided the mixing angle around y-axis to diagonalize the Majorana mass matrix vanishes, we can derive the information about the absolute values of neutrino masses and Majorana mass responsible for the neutrinoless double beta decay experiment through the data set of neutrino experiments. In the simplified case that there is no CP phase, we find that the neutrino masses are decided as $m_1:m_2:m_3\approx 1:2:8$ and that there are no solution which satisfy $m_3<m_1<m_2$ (inverted mass spectrum). Then, including all CP phases, we reanalyze the absolute values of neutrino masses and Majorana mass responsible for the neutrinoless double beta decay experiment.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, revtex4, to appear in J.PHYS.SOC.JA

Prediction of Ue3U_{e3} in Neutrino Mass Matrix with Two Zeros

We have discussed predictions of $|U_{e3}|$ and $J_{CP}$ in the framework of the neutrino mass matrix with two zeros. In the case of the best fit values of $\tan^2\theta_{12}$, $\tan^2\theta_{23}$, $\Delta m^2_{\rm sun}$ and $\Delta m_{\rm atm}^2$, the prediction of $|U_{e3}|$ is $0.11\sim 0.14$. The lower bound of $|U_{e3}|$ is 0.05, which depends on $\tan\theta_{12}$ and $\tan\theta_{23}$. We have investigated the stability of these predictions taking account of small corrections to zeros, which may come from radiative corrections or off-diagonal elements of the charged lepton massmatrix. The lower bound of $|U_{e3}|$ comes down considerably due to the small corrections to zeros.Comment: Figures and discussions are adde

Dynamics of chiral oscillations - A comparative analysis with spin-flipping

Chiral oscillation as well as spin flipping effects correspond to quantum phenomena of fundamental importance in the context of particle physics and, in particular, of neutrino physics. From the point of view of first quantized theories, we are specifically interested in appointing the differences between chirality and helicity by obtaining their dynamic equations for a fermionic Dirac-type particle (neutrino). We also identify both effects when the non-minimal coupling with an external (electro)magnetic field in the neutrino interacting Lagrangian is taken into account. We demonstrate that, however, there is no constraint between chiral oscillations, when it takes place in vacuum, and the process of spin flipping related to the helicity quantum number, which does not take place in vacuum. To conclude, we show that the origin of chiral oscillations (in vacuum) can be interpreted as position very rapid oscillation projections onto the longitudinal direction of momentum.Comment: 14 pages, no figure

Scalar Bilepton Dark Matter

In this work we show that 3-3-1 model with right-handed neutrinos has a natural weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark mater candidate. It is a complex scalar with mass of order of some hundreds of GeV which carries two units of lepton number, a scalar bilepton. This makes it a very peculiar WIMP, very distinct from Supersymmetric or Extra-dimension candidates. Besides, although we have to make some reasonable assumptions concerning the several parameters in the model, no fine tunning is required in order to get the correct dark matter abundance. We also analyze the prospects for WIMP direct detection by considering recent and projected sensitivities for WIMP-nucleon elastic cross section from CDMS and XENON Collaborations.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures, uses iopart.cls, same text as published version with a small different arrangement of figure

Neutrino Masses and Lepton-flavor-violating τ\tau Decays in the Supersymmetric Left-right Model

In the supersymmetric left-right model, the light neutrino masses are given by the Type-II seesaw mechanism. A duality property about this mechanism indicates that there exist eight possible Higgs triplet Yukawa couplings which result in the same neutrino mass matrix. In this paper, We work out the one-loop renormalization group equations for the effective neutrino mass matrix in the supersymmetric left-right model. The stability of the Type-II seesaw scenario is briefly discussed. We also study the lepton-flavor-violating processes ($\tau\to \mu\gamma$ and $\tau\to e\gamma$) by using the reconstructed Higgs triplet Yukawa couplings

Optimizing a dynamic fossil fuel CO2 emission model with CTDAS (CarbonTracker Data Assimilation Shell, v1.0) for an urban area using atmospheric observations of CO2, CO, NOx, and SO2

We present a modelling framework for fossil fuel CO2 emissions in an urban environment, which allows constraints from emission inventories to be combined with atmospheric observations of CO2 and its co-emitted species CO, NOx , and SO2. Rather than a static assignment of average emission rates to each unit area of the urban domain, the fossil fuel emissions we use are dynamic: they vary in time and space in relation to data that describe or approximate the activity within a sector, such as traffic density, power demand, 2m temperature (as proxy for heating demand), and sunlight and wind speed (as proxies for renewable energy supply). Through inverse modelling, we optimize the relationships between these activity data and the resulting emissions of all species within the dynamic fossil fuel emission model, based on atmospheric mole fraction observations. The advantage of this novel approach is that the optimized parameters (emission factors and emission ratios, N D 44) in this dynamic emission model (a) vary much less over space and time, (b) allow for a physical interpretation of mean and uncertainty, and (c) have better defined uncertainties and covariance structure. This makes them more suited to extrapolate, optimize, and interpret than the gridded emissions themselves. The merits of this approach are investigated using a pseudo-observation-based ensemble Kalman filter inversion set-up for the Dutch Rijnmond area at 1km-1km resolution. We find that the fossil fuel emission model approximates the gridded emissions well (annual mean differences < 2 %, hourly temporal r2 D 0:21-0.95), while reported errors in the underlying parameters allow a full covariance structure to be created readily. Propagating this error structure into atmospheric mole fractions shows a strong dominance of a few large sectors and a few dominant uncertainties, most notably the emission ratios of the various gases considered. If the prior emission ratios are either sufficiently well-known or well constrained from a dense observation network, we find that including observations of co-emitted species improves our ability to estimate emissions per sector relative to using CO2 mole fractions only. Nevertheless, the total CO2 emissions can be well constrained with CO2 as the only tracer in the inversion. Because some sectors are sampled only sparsely over a day, we find that propagating solutions from day-to-day leads to largest uncertainty reduction and smallest CO2 residuals over the 14 consecutive days considered. Although we can technically estimate the temporal distribution of some emission categories like shipping separate from their total magnitude, the controlling parameters are difficult to distinguish. Overall, we conclude that our new system looks promising for application in verification studies, provided that reliable urban atmospheric transport fields and reasonable a priori emission ratios for CO2 and its co-emitted species can be produced

Detecting matter effects in long baseline experiments

Experiments strongly suggest that the flavour mixing responsible for the atmospheric neutrino anomaly is very close to being maximal. Thus, it is of great theoretical as well as experimental importance to measure any possible deviation from maximality. In this context, we reexamine the effects of matter interactions in long baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. Contrary to popular belief, the muon neutrino survival probability is shown to be quite sensitive to matter effects. Moreover, for moderately long baselines, the difference between the survival probilities for $\nu_\mu$ and $\bar\nu_\mu$ is shown to be large and sensitive to the deviation of $|U_{\mu 3}|$ from maximality. Performing a realistic analysis, we demonstrate that a muon-storage ring $\nu$-source alongwith an iron calorimeter detector can measure such deviations. (Contrary to recent claims, this is not so for the NuMI--{\sc minos} experiment.) We also discuss the possible correlation in measuring $U_{\mu 3}$ and $U_{e3}$ in such experiment.Comment: 18 pages, LaTe

The Future Evolution of White Dwarf Stars Through Baryon Decay and Time Varying Gravitational Constant

Motivated by the possibility that the fundamental ``constants'' of nature could vary with time, this paper considers the long term evolution of white dwarf stars under the combined action of proton decay and variations in the gravitational constant. White dwarfs are thus used as a theoretical laboratory to study the effects of possible time variations, especially their implications for the future history of the universe. More specifically, we consider the gravitational constant $G$ to vary according to the parametric relation $G = G_0 (1 + t/t_\ast)^{-p}$, where the time scale $t_\ast$ is the same order as the proton lifetime. We then study the long term fate and evolution of white dwarf stars. This treatment begins when proton decay dominates the stellar luminosity, and ends when the star becomes optically thin to its internal radiation.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, accepted to Astrophysics and Space Scienc

Global fits to neutrino oscillation data

I summarize the determination of neutrino oscillation parameters within the three-flavor framework from world neutrino oscillation data with date of May 2006, including the first results from the MINOS long-baseline experiment. It is illustrated how the determination of the leading "solar" and "atmospheric" parameters, as well as the bound on $\theta_{13}$ emerge from an interplay of various complementary data sets. Furthermore, I discuss possible implications of sub-leading three-flavor effects in present atmospheric neutrino data induced by $\Delta m^2_{21}$ and $\theta_{13}$ for the bound on $\theta_{13}$ and non-maximal values of $\theta_{23}$, emphasizing, however, that these effects are not statistically significant at present. Finally, in view of the upcoming MiniBooNE results I briefly comment on the problem to reconcile the LSND signal.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, talk presented at the SNOW2006 workshop, Stockholm, 2-6 May 200