ausblenden:
Schlagwörter:
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology, hep-ph,High Energy Physics - Experiment, hep-ex
Zusammenfassung:
Motivated by recent hints in particle physics and cosmology, we study the
realization of eV-scale sterile neutrinos within both the seesaw mechanism and
flavor symmetry theories. We show that light sterile neutrinos can rather
easily be accommodated in the popular A_4 flavor symmetry models. The exact
tri-bimaximal mixing pattern is perturbed due to active-sterile mixing, which
we discuss in detail for one example. In addition, we find an interesting
extension of the type I seesaw, which can provide a natural origin for eV-scale
sterile neutrinos as well as visible admixtures between sterile and active
neutrinos. We also show that the presence of sterile neutrinos would
significantly change the observables in neutrino experiments, specifically the
oscillation probabilities in short-baseline experiments and the effective mass
in neutrino-less double beta decay. The latter can prove particularly helpful
to strengthen the case for eV-scale sterile neutrinos.
