Neutrino Yukawa textures within type-I see-saw

TL;DR

This paper analyzes neutrino Yukawa textures with zeros within the type-I seesaw framework, showing how flavor symmetries and texture zeros constrain neutrino mass models and predict observable phenomena.

Contribution

It identifies specific zero textures compatible with mu-tau symmetry and observational data, reducing possible models to a few distinct forms with predictive power.

Findings

Only four textures remain under mu-tau symmetry constraints.

Predicted neutrino masses and phases are within specific ranges consistent with observations.

Neutrinoless double beta decay rates are generally below experimental reach, but may be detectable in some scenarios.

Abstract

The arbitrariness of Yukawa couplings can be reduced by the imposition of some flavor symmetries and/or by the realization of texture zeros. We review neutrino Yukawa textures with zeros within the framework of the type-I seesaw with three heavy right chiral neutrinos and in the basis where the latter and the charged leptons are mass diagonal. An assumed non-vanishing mass of every ultralight neutrino and the observed non-decoupling of any neutrino generation allow a maximum of four zeros in the Yukawa coupling matrix $Y_\nu$ in family space. There are seventy two such textures. We show that the requirement of an exact $\mu\tau$ symmetry, coupled with the observational constraints, reduces these seventy two allowed textures to only four corresponding to just two different forms of the light neutrino mass matrix $M_{\nu A}/M_{\nu B}$, resulting in an inverted/normal mass ordering. The effect of each of these on measurable quantities can be described, apart from an overall factor of the neutrino mass scale, in terms of two real parameters and a phase angle all of which are within very constrained ranges. The masses and Majorana phases of ultralight neutrinos are predicted within definite ranges with $3\sigma$ laboratory and cosmological observational inputs. The rate for $0\nu\beta\beta$ decay, though generally below the reach of planned experiments, could approach it in some parameteric regions. Within the same framework, we also study Yukawa textures with a fewer number of zeros, but with exact $\mu\tau$ symmetry. We further formulate the detailed scheme of the explicit breaking of $\mu\tau$ symmetry in terms of three small parameters for allowed four zero textures. The observed sizable mixing between the first and third generations of neutrinos is shown to follow for a suitable choice of these symmetry breaking parameters.