Operatorial characterization of Majorana neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper provides an operatorial characterization of Majorana neutrinos, clarifying the role of CP symmetry and critiquing the pseudo C-symmetry approach in neutrino physics models.

Contribution

It offers a rigorous operator-based framework for understanding Majorana neutrinos and analyzes the limitations of pseudo C-symmetry in physical processes.

Findings

CP symmetry fully describes Majorana neutrino physics.

Pseudo C-symmetry is operatorially ill-defined and leads to vanishing neutrinoless double beta decay amplitude.

Conventional C symmetry is well-defined when constructed from Dirac fermions.

Abstract

The Majorana neutrino $\psi_{M}(x)$ when constructed as a superposition of chiral fermions such as $\nu_{L} + C\overline{\nu_{L}}^{T}$ is characterized by $ ({\cal C}{\cal P}) \psi_{M}(x)({\cal C}{\cal P})^{\dagger} =i\gamma^{0}\psi_{M}(t,-\vec{x})$, and the CP symmetry describes the entire physics contents of Majorana neutrinos. Further specifications of C and P separately could lead to difficulties depending on the choice of C and P. The conventional $ {\cal C} \psi_{M}(x) {\cal C}^{\dagger} = \psi_{M}(x)$ with well-defined P is naturally defined when one constructs the Majorana neutrino from the Dirac-type fermion. In the seesaw model of Type I or Type I+II where the same number of left- and right-handed chiral fermions appear, it is possible to use the generalized Pauli-Gursey transformation to rewrite the seesaw Lagrangian in terms of Dirac-type fermions only; the conventional C symmetry then works to define Majorana neutrinos. In contrast, the "pseudo C-symmetry" $\nu_{L,R}(x)\rightarrow C\overline{\nu_{L,R}(x)}^{T}$ (and associated "pseudo P-symmetry"), that has been often used in both the seesaw model and Weinberg's model to describe Majorana neutrinos, attempts to assign a nontrivial charge conjugation transformation rule to each chiral fermion separately. But this common construction is known to be operatorially ill-defined and, for example, the amplitude of the neutrinoless double beta decay vanishes if the vacuum is assumed to be invariant under the pseudo C-symmetry.