Abstract
In the canonical seesaw framework flavor mixing and CP violation in weak charged-current interactions of light and heavy Majorana neutrinos are correlated with each other and described respectively by the 3 × 3 matrices U and R. We show that the very possibility of |Uμi| = |Uτi| (for i = 1, 2, 3), which is strongly indicated by current neutrino oscillation data, automatically leads to a novel prediction |Rμi| = |Rτi| (for i = 1, 2, 3). We prove that behind these two sets of equalities and the experimental evidence for leptonic CP violation lies a minimal flavor symmetry — the overall neutrino mass term keeps invariant when the left-handed neutrino fields transform as νeL → (νeL)c, νμL → (ντL)c, ντL → (νμL)c and the right-handed neutrino fields undergo an arbitrary unitary CP transformation. Such a generalized μ-τ reflection symmetry may help constrain the flavor textures of active and sterile neutrinos to some extent in the seesaw mechanism.
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Xing, Zz. Identifying a minimal flavor symmetry of the seesaw mechanism behind neutrino oscillations. J. High Energ. Phys. 2022, 34 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2022)034
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2022)034