An approach to permutation symmetry for the electroweak theory

The form of the leptonic mixing matrix emerging from experiment has, in the last few years, generated a lot of interest in the so-called tribimaximal type. This form may be naturally associated with the possibility of a discrete permutation symmetry ($S_3$) among the three generations. However, trying to implement this attractive symmetry has resulted in some problems and it seems to have fallen out of favor. We suggest an approach in which the $S_3$ holds to first approximation, somewhat in the manner of the old SU(3) flavor symmetry of the three flavor quark model. It is shown that in the case of the neutrino sector, a presently large experimentally allowed region can be fairly well described in this first approximation. We briefly discuss the nature of the perturbations which are the analogs of the Gell-Mann Okubo perturbations but confine our attention for the most part to the $S_3$ invariant model. We postulate that the $S_3$ invariant mass spectrum consists of non zero masses for the $(\tau,b,t)$ and zero masses for the other charged fermions but approximately degenerate masses for the three neutrinos. The mixing matrices are assumed to be trivial for the charged fermions but of tribimaximal type for the neutrinos in the first approximation. It is shown that this can be implemented by allowing complex entries for the mass matrix and spontaneous breakdown of the $S_3$ invariance of the Lagrangian.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure, minor corrections and acknowledgment added. To appear in IJM

Neutrino Mixings in SO(10) with Type II Seesaw and theta_{13}

We analyze a class of supersymmetric SO(10) grand unified theories with type II seesaw for neutrino masses, where the contribution to PMNS matrix from the neutrino sector has an exact tri-bi-maximal (TBM) form, dictated by a broken S_4 symmetry. The Higgs fields that determine the fermion masses are two 10 fields and one 126 field, with the latter simultaneously contributing to neutrino as well as charged fermion masses. Fitting charged fermion masses and the CKM mixings lead to corrections to the TBM mixing that determine the final PMNS matrix with the predictions theta_{13} ~ 4-6 degrees and the Dirac CP phase to be between -10 and +15 degrees. We also show correlations between various mixing angles which can be used to test the model.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables; typos corrected in Eq. (4) and Table I

Leptogenesis with TeV Scale Inverse Seesaw in SO(10)

We discuss leptogenesis within a TeV-scale inverse seesaw model for neutrino masses where the seesaw structure is guaranteed by an SO(10) symmetry. Contrary to the TeV-scale type-I gauged seesaw, the constraints imposed by successful leptogenesis in these models are rather weak and allow for the extra gauge bosons W_R and Z' to be in the LHC accessible range. The key differences in the inverse seesaw compared to the type I case are: (i) decay and inverse decay rates larger than the scatterings involving extra gauge bosons due to the large Yukawa couplings and (ii) the suppression of the washout due to very small lepton number breaking.Comment: References and a few comments added, improved figures; version to be published in PR

Natural TeV-Scale Left-Right Seesaw for Neutrinos and Experimental Tests

We present a TeV-scale left-right ultraviolet completion of type-I seesaw for neutrino masses based on the $SU(2)_L\times SU(2)_R\times U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge group without parity, which leads to "large" light-heavy neutrino mixing while keeping the neutrino masses small in a natural manner guaranteed by discrete symmetries. We point out specific observable implications of this class of models if the $SU(2)_R$-breaking scale is of order 5 TeV, in searches for lepton flavor violating processes such as $\mu\to e\gamma$, $\mu\to 3 e$ and $\mu-e$ conversion in nuclei, and lepton number violating processes such as neutrinoless double beta decay as well as at the LHC. In particular, if the upper limit on BR$(\mu\to e\gamma)$ improves by one order of magnitude, a large range of the parameters of the model would be ruled out.Comment: 34 pages, 8 figures, 10 tables; some comments and references added; version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Reconciling Supersymmetry and Left-Right Symmetry

We construct the minimal supersymmetric left-right theory and show that at the renormalizable level it requires the existence of an intermediate $B-L$ breaking scale. The subsequent symmetry breaking down to MSSM automatically preserves R-symmetry. Furthermore, unlike in the nonsupersymmetric version of the theory, the see-saw mechanism takes its canonical form. The theory predicts the existence of a triplet of Higgs scalars much lighter than the $B-L$ breaking scale.Comment: 4 pages, revtex, no figure