New $A_4$ lepton flavor model from $S_4$ modular symmetry
Tatsuo Kobayashi, Yusuke Shimizu, Kenta Takagi, Morimitsu Tanimoto,, Takuya H. Tatsuishi

TL;DR
This paper develops a new lepton flavor model based on $A_4$ symmetry derived from the $S_4$ modular group, successfully explaining neutrino masses and mixing parameters with specific predictions.
Contribution
It introduces a novel $A_4$ flavor model from $S_4$ modular symmetry, detailing the derivation of modular forms and neutrino mass matrix construction.
Findings
Viable neutrino mass matrices for NH and IH.
Predictions for $ heta_{23}$ and $ ext{CP}$ phase depending on neutrino mass sum.
Decomposition of $S_4$ modular forms into $A_4$ representations.
Abstract
We study a flavor model with symmetry which originates from modular group. In symmetry, subgroup can be anomalous, and then can be violated to . Starting with a symmetric Lagrangian at the tree level, the Lagrangian at the quantum level has only symmetry when in is anomalous. We obtain modular forms of two singlets and a triplet representations of by decomposing modular forms into representations. We propose a new flavor model of leptons by using those modular forms. We succeed in constructing a viable neutrino mass matrix through the Weinberg operator for both normal hierarchy (NH) and inverted hierarchy (IH) of neutrino masses. Our predictions of the CP violating Dirac phase and the mixing depend on the sum of neutrino masses for NH.
| observable & range for NH | range for IH | |
|---|---|---|
| – | – | |
| – | – | |
| – | – | |
| – | – | |
| – | – |
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EPHOU-19-010
HUPD1911
**New lepton flavor model from modular symmetry
**
Tatsuo Kobayashi 1 , Yusuke Shimizu 2 , Kenta Takagi 2 ,
Morimitsu Tanimoto 3 , Takuya H. Tatsuishi 1
1Department of Physics, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan
2*Graduate School of Science, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8526
3Department of Physics, Niigata University, Niigata 950-2181
( Abstract
We study a flavor model with symmetry which originates from modular group. In symmetry, subgroup can be anomalous, and then can be violated to . Starting with a symmetric Lagrangian at the tree level, the Lagrangian at the quantum level has only symmetry when in is anomalous. We obtain modular forms of two singlets and a triplet representations of by decomposing modular forms into representations. We propose a new flavor model of leptons by using those modular forms. We succeed in constructing a viable neutrino mass matrix through the Weinberg operator for both normal hierarchy (NH) and inverted hierarchy (IH) of neutrino masses. Our predictions of the CP violating Dirac phase and the mixing depend on the sum of neutrino masses for NH.
)
1 Introduction
The origin of the flavor structure is one of important issues in particle physics. The recent development of the neutrino oscillation experiments provides us important clues to investigate the flavor physics. Indeed, the neutrino oscillation experiments have presented two large flavor mixing angles, which is a contrast to the quark mixing angles. In addition to the precise measurements of the flavor mixing angles of leptons, the T2K and NOA strongly indicate the CP violation in the neutrino oscillation [1, 2]. We are in the era to develop the flavor theory of leptons with the observation of flavor mixing angles and CP violating phase.
It is interesting to impose non-Abelian discrete symmetries for flavors. In the last twenty years, the studies of discrete symmetries for flavors have been developed through the precise observation of flavor mixing angles of leptons [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. Many models have been proposed by using the non-Abelian discrete groups , , , and other groups with larger orders to explain the large neutrino mixing angles. Among them, flavor symmetry is attractive because group is the minimal one including a triplet irreducible representation. A triplet representation allows us to give a natural explanation of the existence of three families of leptons [12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18]. However, a variety of models is so wide that it is difficult to obtain a clear evidence of the flavor symmetry.
Superstring theory is a promising candidate for the unified theory of all interactions including gravity and matter fields such as quarks and leptons as well as the Higgs field. Superstring theory predicts six-dimensional compact space in addition to four-dimensional space-time. Geometrical aspects, i.e. the size and shape of the compact space, are described by moduli parameters. Gauge couplings and Yukawa couplings as well as higher order couplings in four-dimensional low-energy effective field theory depend on moduli parameters. A geometrical symmetry of the six-dimensional compact space can be the origin of the flavor symmetry 111 It was shown that stringy selection rules in addition to geometrical symmetries lead to certain non-Abelian flavor symmetries [19, 20, 21, 22]..
The torus compactification as well as the orbifold compactification has the modular symmetry 222 For example, zero-modes in the torus compactification with magnetic fluxes transform non-trivially under the modular symmetry [23].. It is interesting that the modular symmetry includes , , , as finite groups [24]. Inspired by these aspects, recently a new type of flavor models was proposed [25]. In Ref. [25], the flavor symmetry is assumed as a finite group of the modular symmetry. Three families of leptons are assigned to certain representations like conventional flavor models. Furthermore, Yukawa couplings as well as Majorana masses are assumed to be modular forms which are functions of the modular parameter and they are non-trivial representations under . We have a modular form of triplet with weight 2 [25]. The flavor symmetry is broken when the value of the modular parameter is fixed. It is noted that one can construct flavor models without flavon fields.
The modular forms of the weight 2 have been constructed for the doublet [26], the triplet and doublet [27], and the quintet and triplets [28], as well as the triplet and the triplet [29]. The modular forms of the weight 1 and higher weights are also given for doublet [30]. By use of these modular forms, new flavor models have been constructed [31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44].
Discrete symmetries can be anomalous [45, 46, 47]. Anomalies of non-Abelian symmetries were studied in [48]. (See also [4, 5].) The anomaly of the modular symmetry was also discussed [49]. In the symmetry, the subgroup can be anomalous and then can be violated to . The symmetry is always anomaly-free. Both and can be anomalous, and then they can be violated to Abelian discrete symmetries. Thus, the is unique among , , , in the sense that it can be violated by anomalies to another non-Abelian symmetry, . Even starting with a symmetric Lagrangian at the tree level, the Lagrangian at the quantum level has only the symmetry when subgroup of is anomalous. Our purpose is to show such a possibility in a phenomenological viewpoint. We decompose modular forms into representations. Such modulus functions are different from the modular forms in . We propose a new flavor model with those modular forms, which is much different from the typical modular models [25, 31, 32].
This paper is organized as follows. In section 2, we give a brief review on the modular symmetry and the anomaly. In section 3, we present our model for lepton mass matrices. In section 4, we show our numerical results for lepton mixing angles, the CP violating Dirac phase and neutrino masses. Section 5 is devoted to a summary. Relevant representations of and groups are presented in Appendix A. We list the input data of neutrinos in Appendix B.
2 Modular symmetry and anomaly
2.1 Modular forms
We give a brief review on the modular symmetry and modular forms. The torus compactification is the simplest compactification. We consider a two-dimensional torus which can be constructed as a division of the two-dimensional real space by a lattice , i.e. . We use the complex coordinate on . The lattice is spanned by two vectors, and , where is a real and is a complex modulus parameter. The same lattice is spanned by the following lattice vectors,
[TABLE]
where are integer with satisfying . That is, the symmetry. Under , the modulus parameter transforms
[TABLE]
This modular symmetry is generated by two elements, and , which transform as
[TABLE]
They satisfy the following algebraic relations,
[TABLE]
If we impose the algebraic relation , we obtain the finite groups for , and these are isomorphic to , respectively. We define the congruence subgroups of level as
[TABLE]
For , we define . Since the element does not belong to for , we have . The quotient groups defined as are finite modular groups.
Modular forms of weight are the holomorphic functions of and transform as
[TABLE]
where is a unitary matrix. Also, matter fields with the modular weight transform
[TABLE]
under the modular symmetry.
In Ref. [27], the modular form of the level for have been constructed with the Dedekind eta function, ,
[TABLE]
where . The modular forms of the weight 2 are written by
[TABLE]
where and
[TABLE]
These five modular forms are decomposed into the and representations under ,
[TABLE]
The generators, and , are represented on the above modular forms,
[TABLE]
for , and
[TABLE]
for . The modular form of larger weights are obtained as products of and . Other representations are shown in Appendix A.
2.2 Anomaly
A discrete symmetry can be anomalous. Each element in a non-Abelian symmetry satisfies , that is, the Abelian symmetry. If all of such Abelian symmetries in a non-Abelian symmetry are anomaly-free, the whole non-Abelian symmetry is anomaly-free. Otherwise, the non-Abelian symmetry is anomalous, and anomalous sub-group is violated. Furthermore, each element is represented by a matrix . If , the corresponding is always anomaly-free. On the other hand, if , the corresponding symmetry can be anomalous. See anomalies of non-Abelian symmetries [48, 4, 5].
In particular, in Refs. [4, 5], it shows which sub-groups can be anomalous in non-Abelian discrete symmetries. The group is isomorphic to , and then the symmetry of can be anomalous in . In general, the and representations as well as have while the and representations have . Indeed and for as well as and have . Thus, the odd number of ’s as well as and can lead to anomalies.
If the above symmetry in is anomalous, is violated to . In this case, and themselves are anomalous, but and are anomaly-free. These anomaly-free elements satisfy
[TABLE]
if we impose . That is, the algebra is realized. The explicit representations of generators and for the triplet and singlets are presented in Appendix A. The modular forms for act under the symmetry as follows:
[TABLE]
That is, we have
[TABLE]
Note that these are different from modular forms of the level for because they do not transform as multiplets under and .
Anomalies of the symmetry, in particular its sub-symmetry, depend on models, that is, the numbers of , and . If the symmetry is anomaly-free and exact, the model building follows the study in Ref. [27] and its extension. If the is anomalous and violated to , that leads to a new type of model building. In the next section, we study such a new possibility for lepton mass matrices.
3 lepton model from modular symmetry
We present a viable model of leptons originated from the subgroup of group. The charge assignment of the fields and modular forms is summarized in Table 1. We assign the modular weight to the left- and right-handed leptons. If the is exact, and are combined to the doublet. The odd number of doublets can lead to anomalies.
The modular forms of weight 2 that transform non-trivially under the symmetry are given in modular group as discussed in section 2. The triplet and non-trivial singlets , are constructed by five modular forms in Eq. (9), which is a difference from the modular symmetry with three modular forms.
Suppose neutrinos to be Majorana particles. The superpotential of the neutrino mass term is given by the Weinberg operator:
[TABLE]
where denote the triplet of the left-handed lepton doublet, , and stands for the Higgs doublet which couples to the neutrino sector. Parameters and are complex constants in general. If the symmetry is exact, and are combined to the doublet . That is, the second and third terms are originated from , where is taken to be of , and we have . Breaking of to leads to the above terms with . One naively expects to be , although their difference depends on breaking effects. At any rate, we treat them as independent parameters from the phenomenological viewpoint. We also discuss the situation with .
The superpotential of the mass term of charged leptons is described as
[TABLE]
where charged leptons are assigned to the singlets of respectively. The is a Higgs doublet which couples to the charged lepton sector. Coefficients , and can be taken to be real. Then, charged lepton masses are given in terms of , , , and . Similar to Eq. (17), if the is exact, and are combined to the doublet. That is, we have to require . Here, we also treat these parameters as independent parameters from the phenomenological viewpoint.
The relevant mass matrices are given by using the multiplication rules based on and in Appendix A. The Majorana neutrino mass matrix is:
[TABLE]
while the charged lepton matrix is given as:
[TABLE]
where , and are taken to be real positive without loss of generality.
4 Numerical result
We discuss numerical results for the lepton flavor mixing by using Eqs. (19) and (20). Parameters of the model are , , and of the charge lepton mass matrix; and and of the neutrino mass matrix in addition to modulus . Parameters , , and are real while and are complex in general. However, we take and to be real in order to present a simple viable model, that is to say, the CP violation comes from modular forms in section 2. Parameters , , and are given in terms of after inputting three charged lepton masses. Therefore, we scan the parameters in the following ranges as:
[TABLE]
where the fundamental domain of is taken into account. The fundamental region is shown in Fig. 6. The lower-cut of is artificial to keep the accurate numerical calculation. The upper-cut is enough large to estimate the modular forms.
We input the experimental data within C.L.[51] of three mixing angles in the lepton mixing matrix [52] in order to constrain magnitudes of parameters. We also put the two observed neutrino mass square differences (, ) and the cosmological bound for the neutrino masses [eV] [53, 54]. Since parameters are severely restricted due to experimental data, the Dirac phase is predicted. Furthermore, we also discuss the effective mass of the decay :
[TABLE]
where and are Majorana phases defined in Ref. [52].
There are two possible spectra of neutrinos masses , which are the normal hierarchy (NH), , and the inverted hierarchy (IH), . At first, we show the predicted region of – in Fig. 2, where cyan-points and red-points denote cases of NH and IH, respectively. For NH of neutrino masses, the predicted is and –. It is noticed that is excluded. The prediction of becomes clear if is precisely measured. Indeed, is predicted around and at the observed best fit point of [51].
For IH of neutrino masses, the predicted is – and –. It is found that is also excluded for IH.
We present the prediction of the effective mass of the decay, versus the lightest neutrino mass for both NH and IH of neutrino masses in Fig. 2. The upper-bound of the lightest neutrino mass is given by the cosmological upper-bound of the sum of neutrino masses. For NH, the lower-bound of the lightest neutrino mass is [meV]. The predicted range of is – [meV] depending on the lightest neutrino mass. For IH, is predicted in – [meV]. Hence, the decay will be possibly observed in the future [55].
Let us discuss the neutrino mass dependence of and . We present the predicted versus the sum of neutrino masses in Fig. 4, where the cosmological bound [meV] is imposed. The predicted depends on the sum of neutrino masses, where [meV] for NH of neutrino masses. In the range of [meV], – is predicted. In the range of [meV], we obtain . For IH, the sum of neutrino mass is predicted for with or .
The predicted is also presented versus in Fig. 4. In the case of NH, the observed best fit point of [51] is realized at – [meV]. For IH, we get – [meV] for the best fit point of . Hence, the observation of the sum of neutrino masses in the cosmology will provide a severe constraint to the flavor model.
We present the set of best-fit parameters and observables. For NH, we obtain:
[TABLE]
where . For IH, we have:
[TABLE]
where .
We show the allowed region of – in Fig. 6, where cyan-points and red-points denote the NH and IH cases, respectively. The fundamental domain of is also presented by olive-green in this figure, where the real part of is and the imaginary part of is expanded downward. Some points are outside of the fundamental domain of . Those points are transformed into the inside of the fundamental domain by the transformations. In this figure, the shift symmetry of Eq.(3) is clearly seen. In order to show symmetry of Eq.(3), we plot one pair by small white triangles. It is seen that the plotted points (red) on inside the fundamental region of are converted to the points on the circles.
We show the allowed region of – in Fig. 6. The magnitudes of and are found to be of order one for both NH and IH, which is consistent with the conventional flavor model [16]. It is noticed that the point is excluded. That is to say, we need either singlet modular forms of or in order to reproduce the experimental data of leptons in Appendix B. One naively expects to be since is broken to due to quantum effects (anomaly) as discussed in section 3. Obtained values of and deviate from as seen in Eq.(23) for NH while the desirable region of exists as seen in Eq.(24) for IH. Thus, we should discuss the magnitude of the breaking beyond the naive expectation. However, it is out of scope in this paper.
In our work, we take and to be real in a simple viable model. Our predicted regions of and are possibly enlarged if and are complex. Whereas, it is worthwhile to discuss the case of real and because the case is attractive in the context of the generalized CP violation of modular-invariant flavor model [39].
Finally, we also comment on numerical values on , and of the charged lepton mass matrix. These ratios are typically and for the case of NH as seen in Eq.(23). The value of is much smaller than and , on the other hand, we need a mild hierarchy of between and although one may naively expect as discussed in section 3. Thus, the magnitude of the breaking is somewhat large beyond the naive expectation. For the case of IH, we need a strong hierarchy between and as seen in Eq.(24). Therefore, the IH case is not favored in our model.
In our calculations, we take Yukawa couplings of charged leptons at the GUT scale GeV, where is taken as discussed in Appendix B. However, we input the data of NuFIT 4.0 [51] for three lepton mixing angles and neutrino mass parameters. The renormalization group equation (RGE) effects of mixing angles and the mass ratio are negligibly small in the case of even if IH of neutrino masses is considered (see Appendix B).
5 Summary
In the symmetry, the subgroup can be anomalous, and then can be violated to . The symmetry is unique among , , , in the sense that it can be violated by anomalies to another non-Abelian symmetry, . Starting with a symmetric Lagrangian at the tree level, the Lagrangian at the quantum level has only symmetry when in is anomalous. We have studied such a possibility that the flavor symmetry is originated from the modular group. Decomposing modular forms into representations, we have obtained the modular forms of two singlets, and , in addition to triplet, for . Using those modular forms, we have succeeded in constructing the viable neutrino mass matrix through the Weinberg operator for both NH and IH of neutrino masses. Our model presents a new possibility of flavor model with the modular symmetry.
Indeed, we have obtained an interesting prediction of for both NH and IH, and their predictions also depend on the sum of neutrino masses. Hence, the observation of the sum of neutrino masses in the cosmology will provide a severe constraint to the flavor model.
Realistic mass matrices are realized in the parameter region with small as well as large . If our four-dimensional field theory is originated from extra dimensional theory or superstring theory on a compact space, the volume of compact space is proportional to . Such volume of the compact space must be larger than the string scale. For example, the volume of torus compactification is obtained by . Thus, larger will be required for smaller .
Furthermore, it is important how to derive the preferred values of in such compactified theory. That is the so-called moduli stabilization problem. However, that is beyond our scope. We can study this problem elsewhere333 Realistic results are obtained at some points of near edges of the fundamental domain and domains transformed by , and their products. The edges of the fundamental domain can be candidates for the minimum of the modulus potential. (See e.g. Ref.[59] and its references therein.).
**Acknowledgement
**
This work is supported by MEXT KAKENHI Grant Number JP19H04605 (TK), and JSPS Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research 18J11233 (THT). The work of YS is supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP17K05418 and Fujyukai Foundation.
Appendix
Appendix A and representations
The representations and of are given for the representations and in section 2. Here, we give other representations. The generators and are represented by
[TABLE]
on the representation, where , and
[TABLE]
for , while for .
On the other hand, we take the generators of group and for by using the and of the group as follows:
[TABLE]
Since the doublet of group is transformed by and as
[TABLE]
the doublet of can be decomposed into singlets of transformed as
[TABLE]
In this base, the multiplication rule of the triplet is
[TABLE]
More details are shown in the review [4, 5].
Appendix B Input data
We input charged lepton masses in order to constrain the model parameters. We take Yukawa couplings of charged leptons at the GUT scale GeV, where is taken [31, 56, 57, 58]:
[TABLE]
where lepton masses are given by with GeV. We also use the following lepton mixing angles and neutrino mass parameters in Table 2 given by NuFIT 4.0 [51]. The RGE effects of mixing angles and the mass ratio are negligibly small in the case of for both NH and IH as seen in Appendix E of Ref. [31].
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