Phenomenological study of extended seesaw model for light sterile neutrino

TL;DR

This paper explores the zero textures of Yukawa matrices in the minimal extended type-I seesaw model, identifying specific viable neutrino mass textures compatible with experimental data and proposing a flavor symmetry realization.

Contribution

It systematically analyzes zero textures in the extended seesaw model, revealing only two viable inverted hierarchy neutrino mass textures and connecting them to flavor symmetry models.

Findings

Identified two allowed zero textures with inverted hierarchy.

Linked textures to discrete flavor symmetry $Z_8 imes Z_2$.

Re-examined phenomenological implications with recent data.

Abstract

We study the zero textures of the Yukawa matrices in the minimal extended type-I seesaw (MES) model which can give rise to $\sim$ eV scale sterile neutrinos. In this model, three right handed neutrinos and one extra singlet $S$ are added to generate a light sterile neutrino. The light neutrino mass matrix for the active neutrinos, $ m_{\nu}$, depends on the Dirac neutrino mass matrix ($ M_{D} $), Majorana neutrino mass matrix ($ M_{R} $) and the mass matrix ($ M_{S} $) coupling the right handed neutrinos and the singlet. The model predicts one of the light neutrino masses to vanish. We systematically investigate the zero textures in $ M_{D} $ and observe that maximum five zeros in $ M_{D} $ can lead to viable zero textures in $ m_{\nu} $. For this study we consider four different forms for $ M_R $ (one diagonal and three off diagonal) and two different forms of $(M_{S})$ containing one zero. Remarkably we obtain only two allowed forms of $ m_{\nu} $ ($m_{e\tau} = 0 $ and $m_{\tau\tau}=0$) having inverted hierarchical mass spectrum. We re-analyze the phenomenological implications of these two allowed textures of $m_\nu$ in the light of recent neutrino oscillation data. In the context of the MES model, we also express the low energy mass matrix, the mass of the sterile neutrino and the active-sterile mixing in terms of the parameters of the allowed Yukawa matrices. The MES model leads to some extra correlations which disallow some of the Yukawa textures obtained earlier, even though they give allowed one-zero forms of $m_\nu$. We show that the allowed textures in our study can be realized in a simple way in a model based on MES mechanism with a discrete Abelian flavor symmetry group $Z_8 \times Z_2$.