Comment on Reparametrization Invariance of Quark-Lepton Complementarity

We study the complementarity between quark and lepton mixing angles (QLC), the sum of an angle in quark mixing and the corresponding angle in lepton mixing is $\pi/4$. Experimentally in the standard PDG parametrization, two such relations exist approximately. These QLC relations are accidental which only manifest themselves in the PDG parametrization. We propose reparametrization invariant expressions for the complementarity relations in terms of the magnitude of the elements in the quark and lepton mixing matrices. In the exact QLC limit, it is found that $|V_{us}/V_{ud}| + |V_{e2}/V_{e1}| + |V_{us}/V_{ud}| |V_{e2}/V_{e1}| =1$ and $|V_{cb}/V_{tb}| + |V_{\mu 3}/V_{\tau 3}| +|V_{cb}/V_{tb}|| {V_{\mu 3}}/V_{\tau 3}| =1$. Expressions with deviations from exact complementarity are obtained. Implications of these relations are also discussed.Comment: 5 pages and 1 figure. Implications for recent Daya-Bay neutrino data on theta_{13} discusse

Lung inflammation by fungus, Bjerkandera adusta isolated from Asian sand dust (ASD) aerosol and enhancement of ovalbumin-induced lung eosinophilia by ASD and the fungus in mice.

BackgroundBjerkandera adusta (B. adusta) is one of the most important etiological fungi associated with chronic cough. However, precise details of the inflammatory response to exposure are not well understood yet. B. adusta was recently identified in Asian sand dust (ASD) aerosol. Therefore, in the present study the exacerbating effects of ASD on B. adusta-induced lung inflammation and B. adusta + ASD on ovalbumin (OVA)-induced murine lung eosinophilia were investigated using experimental mice.MethodsIn order to prepare testing samples, B. adusta obtained from ASD aerosol was inactivated by formalin and ASD collected from the atmosphere was heated to remove toxic organic substances (H-ASD). CD-1 mice were instilled intratracheally with 12 different samples prepared with various combinations of B. adusta, H-ASD, and OVA in a normal saline solution. The lung pathology, cytological profiles in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF), and the levels of inflammatory cytokines/chemokines in BALF were investigated.ResultsH-ASD aggravated the lung eosinophilia induced by B. adusta alone, which also aggravated the lung eosinophilia induced by OVA. The mixture of OVA, H-ASD, and B. adusta caused serious fibrous thickening of the subepithelial layer, eosinophil infiltration, and proliferation of goblet cells in the airways along with remarkable increases of IL-13, eotaxin, IL-5, and MCP-3 in BALF.ConclusionsThe results of the present study demonstrated that B. adusta isolated from ASD aerosol induces allergic lung diseases. H-ASD enhanced allergic reactions caused by OVA or B. adusta. A mixture of B. adusta, H-ASD, and OVA caused the most remarkable exacerbation to the allergic airway inflammation via remarkable increases of pro-inflammatory mediators

Scales of Fermion Mass Generation and Electroweak Symmetry Breaking

The scale of mass generation for fermions (including neutrinos) and the scale for electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB) can be bounded from above by the unitarity of scattering involving longitudinal weak gauge bosons or their corresponding would-be Goldstone bosons. Including the exact n-body phase space we analyze the 2 --> n ($n \geq 2$) processes for the fermion-(anti)fermion scattering into multiple gauge boson final states. Contrary to naive energy power counting, we demonstrate that as $n$ becomes large, the competition between an increasing energy factor and a phase-space suppression leads to a {\it strong new upper bound} on the scale of fermion mass generation at a finite value $n=n_s$, which is {\it independent of the EWSB scale,} $v = (\sqrt{2}G_F)^{-1/2}$. For quarks, leptons and Majorana neutrinos, the strongest 2 --> n limits range from about 3TeV to 130-170TeV (with $2\lesssim n_s \lesssim 24$), depending on the measured fermion masses. Strikingly, given the tiny neutrino masses as constrained by the neutrino oscillations, neutrinoless double-beta decays and astrophysical observations, the unitarity violation of $\nu_L\nu_L\to nW_L^a$ scattering actually occurs at a scale no higher than ~170 TeV. Implications for various mechanisms of neutrino mass generation are analyzed. On the other hand, for the 2 --> n pure Goldstone-boson scattering, we find that the decreasing phase space factor always dominates over the growing overall energy factor when $n$ becomes large, so that the best unitarity bound on the scale of EWSB remains at n=2.Comment: 67pp, to match PRD (minor typos fixed

Unitarity boomerangs of quark and lepton mixing matrices

The most popular way to present mixing matrices of quarks (CKM) and leptons (PMNS) is the parametrization with three mixing angles and one CP-violating phase. There are two major options in this kind of parametrizations, one is the original Kobayashi-Maskawa (KM) matrix, and the other is the Chau-Keung (CK) matrix. In a new proposal by Frampton and He, a unitarity boomerang is introduced to combine two unitarity triangles, and this new presentation displays all four independent parameters of the KM parametrization in the quark sector simultaneously. In this paper, we study the relations between KM and CK parametrizations, and also consider the quark-lepton complementarity (QLC) in the KM parametrization. The unitarity boomerang is discussed in the situation of the CK parametrization for comparison with that in the KM parametrization in the quark sector. Then we extend the idea of unitarity boomerang to the lepton sector, and check the corresponding unitarity boomerangs in the two cases of parametrizations.Comment: 18 latex pages, 4 figures. Version accepted for publication in PL

Berry Phase in Neutrino Oscillations

We study the Berry phase in neutrino oscillations for both Dirac and Majorana neutrinos. In order to have a Berry phase, the neutrino oscillations must occur in a varying medium, the neutrino-background interactions must depend on at least two independent densities, and also there must be CP violation if the neutrino interactions with matter are mediated only by the standard model W and Z boson exchanges which implies that there must be at least three generations of neutrinos. The CP violating Majorana phases do not play a role in generating a Berry phase. We show that a natural way to satisfy the conditions for the generation of a Berry phase is to have sterile neutrinos with active-sterile neutrino mixing, in which case at least two active and one sterile neutrinos are required. If there are additional new CP violating flavor changing interactions, it is also possible to have a non-zero Berry phase with just two generations.Comment: RevTex 16 pages, no figures, new discussions about sterile neutrino added,typos corrected and errors in references correcte

Spontaneous CP Violating Phase as The CKM Matrix Phase

We propose that the CP violating phase in the CKM mixing matrix is identical to the CP phases responsible for the spontaneous CP violation in the Higgs potential. A specific multi-Higgs model with Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry is constructed to realize this idea. The CP violating phase does not vanish when all Higgs masses become large. There are flavor changing neutral current (FCNC) interactions mediated by neutral Higgs bosons at the tree level. However, unlike general multi-Higgs models, the FCNC Yukawa couplings are fixed in terms of the quark masses and CKM mixing angles. Implications for meson-anti-meson mixing, including recent data on $D-\bar D$ mixing, and neutron electric dipole moment (EDM) are studied. We find that the neutral Higgs boson masses can be at the order of one hundred GeV. The neutron EDM can be close to the present experimental upper bound.Comment: 16 pages, RevTex. Several typos corrected, and one reference adde

A new parametrization of the neutrino mixing matrix for neutrino oscillations

In this paper we study three active neutrino oscillations, favored by recent data from SuperK and SNO, using a new parametrization of the lepton mixing matrix $V$ constructed from a linear combination of the unit matrix $I$, and a hermitian unitary matrix $U$, that is, $V = \cos\theta I + i\sin \theta U$. There are only three real parameters in $V$ including the parameter $\theta$. It is interesting to find that experimental data on atmospheric neutrino dictates the angle $\theta$ to be $\pi/4$ such that the $\nu_\mu$ and $\nu_\tau$ mixing is maximal. The solar neutrino problem is solved via the MSW effect with a small mixing angle, with $U$ depending on one small parameter $\epsilon$. The resulting mixing matrix with just two parameters ($\theta$ and $\epsilon$) predicts that the oscillating probabilities for $\nu_e\to \nu_\mu$ and $\nu_e \to \nu_\tau$ to be equal and of the order $2\epsilon^2 = (0.25\sim 2.5)\times 10^{-3}$. The measurement of CP asymmetries at the proposed Neutrino Factories would also provide a test of our parametrization.Comment: 10 pages, Retex, no figure

Non-Standard Interaction Effects at Reactor Neutrino Experiments

We study non-standard interactions (NSIs) at reactor neutrino experiments, and in particular, the mimicking effects on \theta_13. We present generic formulas for oscillation probabilities including NSIs from sources and detectors. Instructive mappings between the fundamental leptonic mixing parameters and the effective leptonic mixing parameters are established. In addition, NSI corrections to the mixing angles \theta_13 and \theta_12 are discussed in detailed. Finally, we show that, even for a vanishing \theta_13, an oscillation phenomenon may still be observed in future short baseline reactor neutrino experiments, such as Double Chooz and Daya Bay, due to the existences of NSIs.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, version to appear in PL

Z(3) Flavor Symmetry and Possible Implications

We show in this paper that the Z(3) flavor symmetry, which can successfully produce the tri-bimaximal mixing and flavor pattern of neutrino sector, has a possible explanation in the framework of gauge symmetry by constructing a wavefunction of flavor state particles with the help of the Wilson loop. In this implementation of Z(3) flavor symmetry, we suggest that the flavor charge in weak interaction can be interpreted as a topological charge. Its possible implications and generalizations to the quark sector are also discussed.Comment: 9 pages, no figures, final version for Phys. Lett.

Intrinsic Deviation from the Tri-bimaximal Neutrino Mixing in a Class of A_4 Flavor Models

It is well known that the tri-bimaximal neutrino mixing pattern V_0 can be derived from a class of flavor models with the non-Abelian A_4 symmetry. We point out that small corrections to V_0, which are inherent in the A_4 models and arise from both the charged-lepton and neutrino sectors, have been omitted in the previous works. We show that such corrections may lead the 3 \times 3 neutrino mixing matrix V to a non-unitary deviation from V_0, but they cannot result in a nonzero value of \theta_13 or any new CP-violating phases. Current experimental constraints on the unitarity of V allow us to constrain the model parameters to some extent.Comment: 11 pages, no figures; a reference added, accepted for publication in Phys. Lett.