arXiv subjects

Alexei Yu. Smirnov

Publications and source records attributed to Alexei Yu. Smirnov.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

Neutrino mixing and masses in SO(10) GUTs with hidden sector and flavor symmetries

We consider the neutrino masses and mixing in the framework of SO(10) GUTs with hidden sector consisting of fermionic and bosonic SO(10) singlets and flavor symmetries. The framework allows to disentangle the CKM physics responsible for the CKM mixing and different mass hierarchies of quarks and leptons and the neutrino new physics which produces smallness of neutrino masses and large lepton mixing. The framework leads naturally to the relation $U_{PMNS} \sim V_{CKM}^{\dagger} U_0$, where structure of $U_0$ is determined by the flavor symmetry. The key feature of the framework is that apart from the Dirac mass matrices $m_D$, the portal mass matrix $M_D$ and the mass matrix of singlets $M_S$ are also involved in generation of the lepton mixing. This opens up new possibilities to realize the flavor symmetries and explain the data. Using $A_4 \times Z_4$ as the flavor group, we systematically explore the flavor structures which can be obtained in this framework depending on field content and symmetry assignments. We formulate additional conditions which lead to $U_0 \sim U_{TBM}$ or $U_{BM}$. They include (i) equality (in general, proportionality) of the singlet flavons couplings, (ii) equality of their VEVs; (iii) correlation between VEVs of singlets and triplet, (iv) certain VEV alignment of flavon triplet(s). These features can follow from additional symmetries or be remnants of further unification. Phenomenologically viable schemes with minimal flavon content and minimal number of couplings are constructed.

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arXiv2015

Discrete symmetries and mixing of Dirac neutrinos

We study mixing of the Dirac neutrinos in the residual symmetries approach. The key difference from the Majorana case is that the Dirac mass matrix may have larger symmetries: $G_ν=\mathbf{Z}_{n}$ with $n\geq3$. The symmetry group relations have been generalized to the case of Dirac neutrinos. Using them we have found all new relations between mixing parameters and corresponding symmetry assignments which are in agreement with the present data. The viable relations exist only for the charged lepton residual symmetry $G_{\ell} = \mathbf{Z}_{2}$. The relations involve elements of the rows of the PMNS matrix and lead to precise predictions of the 2-3 mixing angle and certain ranges of the CP violation phase. For larger symmetries $G_{\ell}$, an agreement with data can be achieved if $\sim10\%$ corrections related to breaking of $G_{\ell}$ and $G_ν$ are included.

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arXiv2014

Leptonic CP Violation Phases, Quark-Lepton Similarity and Seesaw Mechanism

We explore generic features of the leptonic CP violation in the framework of the seesaw type I mechanism with similarity of the Dirac lepton and quarks mass matrices $m_D$. For this, we elaborate on the standard parametrization conditions which allow to simultaneously obtain the Dirac and Majorana phases. If the only origin of CP violation is the left-handed (LH) transformation which diagonalizes $m_D$ (similar to quarks), the leptonic CP violation is suppressed and the Dirac phase is close to $π$ or to $0$ with $\sin δ_{CP} \approx (\sin θ_{13}^q /\sin θ_{13}) \cos θ_{23} \sin δ_q \sim λ^2 \sin δ_q$. Here $λ\sim θ_C$, is the Cabibbo mixing angle, and $θ_{13}^q$ and $θ_{13}$ are the 1-3 mixing angles of quarks and leptons respectively. The Majorana phases $β_1$ and $β_2$ are suppressed as $λ^3\sinδ_q$. For Majorana neutrinos implied by seesaw, the right-handed (RH) transformations are important. We explore the simplest extension inspired by Left-Right (L-R) symmetry with small CKM-type CP violation. In this case, seesaw enhancement of the CP violation occurs due to strong hierarchy of the eigenvalues of $m_D$ leading to $δ_{CP} \sim 1$. The enhancement is absent under the phase factorization conditions which require certain relations between parameters of the Majorana mass matrix of RH neutrinos.

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arXiv2014

Theory of neutrino masses and mixing

In spite of enormous experimental progress in determination of the neutrino parameters, theory of neutrino mass and mixing is still on the cross-roads. Guidelines could be (i) the connection between zero neutrino charges (and therefore a possibility to be Majorana particle), smallness of the neutrino mass and large lepton mixing, (ii) joint description of leptons and quarks, (iii) existence of the right handed (RH) neutrinos without special quantum numbers. Properties of the RH neutrinos and the UV completion of the seesaw may turn out to be the key to understand the neutrino mass and mixing. In view of the LHC results minimalistic scenarios like $ν$MSM look rather plausible. Still the GUT's with additional hidden sector, QLC, high scale flavor symmetries are appealing. Concerning mixing, the main issue is "symmetry or no symmetry" behind the observed pattern. The symmetry group condition is useful tool to study consequences of symmetries and to perform "symmetry building". Sterile neutrinos are challenge but also opportunity for the present theoretical constructions.

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arXiv2013

Neutrino mass hierarchy and matter effects

Matter effects modify the mixing and the effective masses of neutrinos in a way which depends on the neutrino mass hierarchy. Consequently, for normal and inverted hierarchies the oscillations and flavor conversion results are different. Sensitivity to the mass hierarchy appears whenever the matter effects on the 1-3 mixing and mass splitting become substantial. This happens in supernovae in wide energy range and in the matter of the Earth. The Earth density profile is a multi-layer medium where the resonance and parametric enhancements of oscillations occur. The enhancement is realized in neutrino (antineutrino) channels for the normal (inverted) mass hierarchy. Multi-megaton scale under ice (water) atmospheric neutrino detectors with low energy threshold can establish mass hierarchy with $(3 - 10) σ$ confidence level in few years. The main challenges of these experiments are discussed and various ways to improve sensitivity are outlined. In particular, inelasticity measurements will allow to increase significance of the hierarchy identification by $20 - 50 \%$ .

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arXiv2013

Restricting the LSND and MiniBooNE sterile neutrinos with the IceCube atmospheric neutrino data

We study oscillations of the high energy atmospheric neutrinos in the Earth into sterile neutrinos with the eV-scale mass. The MSW resonance and parametric enhancement of the $\barν_μ\to\barν_s$ oscillations lead to distortion of the zenith angle distribution of the muon-track events which can be observed by IceCube. Due to matter effect, the IceCube signal depends not only on the mixing element $U_{μ4}$ relevant for LSND and MiniBooNE but also on $U_{τ4}$ and the CP-violating phase $δ_{24}$. We show that the case with $U_{τ4} = δ_{24} = 0$ leads to the weakest IceCube signal and therefore should be used to bound $U_{μ4}$. We compute the zenith angle distributions of the $ν_μ-$events for different energy intervals in the range (0.1 - 10) TeV and find that inclusion of the energy information (binning in energy) improves the sensitivity to $ν_s$ drastically. We estimate that with already collected (during 3 - 4 years) IceCube statistics the bound $|U_{μ4}|^2 < 0.01$ ($99\%$ C.L.) can be established and the mixing required by LSND and MiniBooNE can be excluded at $(4 - 6) σ$ confidence level.

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arXiv2013

Neutrino Propagation in Matter

We describe the effects of neutrino propagation in the matter of the Earth relevant for experiments with atmospheric and accelerator neutrinos and aimed at the determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy and CP-violation. These include (i) the resonance enhancement of neutrino oscillations in matter with constant or nearly constant density, (ii) adiabatic conversion in matter with slowly changing density, (iii) parametric enhancement of oscillations in a multi-layer medium, (iv) oscillations in thin layers of matter. We present the results of semi-analytic descriptions of flavor transitions for the cases of small density perturbations, in the limit of large densities and for small density widths. Neutrino oscillograms of the Earth and their structure after determination of the 1-3 mixing are described. A possibility to identify the neutrino mass hierarchy with the atmospheric neutrinos and multi-megaton scale detectors having low energy thresholds is explored. The potential of future accelerator experiments to establish the hierarchy is outlined.

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arXiv2013

Probing Non-Standard Interaction of Neutrinos with IceCube and DeepCore

We consider effects of the Non-Standard Interactions (NSI) on oscillations of the high energy atmospheric neutrinos. The ν_μ-oscillograms are constructed and their dependence on the NSI strength parameters ε_{αβ} studied. We computed zenith angle distributions of the ν_μ-events in the presence of NSI in different energy regions. The distributions are confronted with the IceCube-79 (high energy sample) and the DeepCore (low energy sample) data and constraints on the strength parameters |ε_{μτ}| < 6x10^-3 and |ε_{μμ}-ε_{ττ}| < 3x10^-2 (90% C.L.) have been obtained. Future measurements of the zenith angle distributions by DeepCore in smaller energy bins will allow to improve the bounds by factor 2 - 3. We discuss the signatures of NSI in zenith angle and energy distributions of events which allow to discriminate them from the effects of sterile neutrinos.

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arXiv2011

Neutrino Masses and a Fourth Generation of Fermions

We study neutrino mass generation in models with four chiral families of leptons and quarks and four right handed neutrinos. Generically, in these models there are three different contributions to the light neutrino masses: the usual see-saw contribution, the tree-level contribution due to mixing of light neutrinos with neutrino of the fourth generation, and the two loop contribution due to the Majorana mass term of the fourth neutrino. We study properties of these contributions and their experimental bounds. The regions of the parameters (mixings of the fourth neutrino, masses of RH neutrino components, etc.) have been identified where various contributions dominate. New possibilities of a realization of the flavour symmetries in the four family context are explored. In particular, we consider applications of the smallest groups, e.g. SG(20,3), with irreducible representation 4.

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arXiv2009

Multiple Spectral Splits of Supernova Neutrinos

Collective oscillations of supernova neutrinos swap the electron neutrino and antineutrino spectra with those of another flavor in certain energy intervals bounded by sharp spectral splits. This phenomenon is far more general than previously appreciated: typically one finds one or more swaps and accompanying splits in the neutrino and antineutrino channels for both inverted and normal neutrino mass hierarchies. Depending on an instability condition, swaps develop around spectral crossings (energies where the electron neutrino or antineutrino fluxes are equal to that of another flavor, as well as infinite E where all fluxes vanish), and the widths of swaps are determined by the spectra and fluxes. Wash-out by multi-angle decoherence varies across the spectrum and splits can survive as sharp spectral features.

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arXiv2009

Paradoxes of neutrino oscillations

Despite the theory of neutrino oscillations being rather old, some of its basic issues are still being debated in the literature. We discuss, in the framework of the wave packet approach, a number of such issues, including the relevance of the "same energy" and "same momentum" assumptions, the role of quantum-mechanical uncertainty relations in neutrino oscillations, the dependence of the production/detection and propagation coherence conditions that ensure the observability of neutrino oscillations on neutrino energy and momentum uncertainties, the question of (in)dependence of the oscillation probabilities on the neutrino production and detection processes, the applicability limits of the stationary source approximation, and Lorentz invariance of the oscillation probability. We also develop a novel approach to calculation of the oscillation probability in the wave packet picture, based on the summation/integration conventions different from the standard one, which gives a new insight into the oscillation phenomenology. We discuss a number of apparently paradoxical features of the theory of neutrino oscillations.

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arXiv2008

Lepton Mixing and Cancellation of the Dirac Mass Hierarchy in SO(10) GUTs with Flavor Symmetries T7 and Sigma(81)

In SO(10) grand unified theories (GUTs) the hierarchy which is present in the Dirac mass term of the neutrinos is generically as strong as the one in the up-type quark mass term. We propose a mechanism to partially or completely cancel this hierarchy in the light neutrino mass matrix in the seesaw context. The two main ingredients of the cancellation mechanism are the existence of three fermionic gauge singlets and of a discrete flavor symmetry G_f which is broken at a higher scale than SO(10). Two realizations of the cancellation mechanism are presented. The realization based on the Frobenius group T7 = Z7 x Z3 leads to a partial cancellation of the hierarchy and relates maximal 2-3 lepton mixing with the geometric hierarchy of the up-quark masses. In the realization with the group Sigma(81) the cancellation is complete and tri-bimaximal lepton mixing is reproduced at the lowest order. In both cases, to fully accommodate the leptonic data we take into account additional effects such as effects of higher-dimensional operators involving more than one flavon. The heavy neutral fermion mass spectra are considered. For both realizations we analyze the flavon potential at the renormalizable level as well as ways to generate the Cabibbo angle.

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arXiv2008

Neutrino-2008: Where are we? Where are we going?

Our present knowledge of neutrinos can be summarized in terms of the "standard neutrino scenario". Phenomenology of this scenario as well as attempts to uncover physics behind neutrino mass and mixing are described. Goals of future studies include complete reconstruction of the neutrino mass and flavor spectrum, further test of the standard scenario and search for new physics beyond it. Developments of new experimental techniques may lead to construction of new neutrino detectors from table-top to multi-Megaton scales which will open new horizons in the field. With detection of neutrino bursts from the Galactic supernova and high energy cosmic neutrinos neutrino astrophysics will enter qualitatively new phase. Neutrinos and LHC (and future colliders), neutrino astronomy, neutrino structure of the Universe, and probably, neutrino technologies will be among leading topics of research.

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arXiv2008

Neutrino oscillograms of the Earth: effects of 1-2 mixing and CP-violation

We develop a comprehensive description of three flavor neutrino oscillations inside the Earth in terms of neutrino oscillograms in the whole range of nadir angles and for energies above 0.1 GeV. The effects of the 1-2 mass splitting and mixing as well the interference of the 1-2 and 1-3 modes of oscillations are quantified. The 1-2 mass splitting and mixing lead to the appearance, apart from the resonance MSW peaks, of the parametric resonance peak for core-crossing trajectories at E_nu ~= 0.2 GeV. We show that the interference effects, in particular CP violation, have a domain structure with borders determined by the solar and atmospheric magic lines and the lines of the interference phase condition. The dependence of the oscillograms on the Dirac CP-violating phase is studied. We show that for sin^2(2 theta13) < 0.1 the strongest dependence of the oscillograms on delta is in the 1-2 and 1-3 resonance regions.

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arXiv2007

Self-induced spectral splits in supernova neutrino fluxes

In the dense-neutrino region above the neutrino sphere of a supernova (r > 400 km), neutrino-neutrino refraction causes collective flavor transformations. They can lead to "spectral splits" where an energy E_split splits the transformed spectrum sharply into parts of almost pure but different flavors. Unless there is an ordinary MSW resonance in the dense-neutrino region, E_split is determined by flavor-lepton number conservation alone. Spectral splits are created by an adiabatic transition between regions of large and small neutrino density. We solve the equations of motion in the adiabatic limit explicitly and provide analytic expressions for a generic example.

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arXiv2007

Adiabaticity and spectral splits in collective neutrino transformations

Neutrinos streaming off a supernova core transform collectively by neutrino-neutrino interactions, leading to "spectral splits" where an energy E_split divides the transformed spectrum sharply into parts of almost pure but different flavors. We present a detailed description of the spectral split phenomenon which is conceptually and quantitatively understood in an adiabatic treatment of neutrino-neutrino effects. Central to this theory is a self-consistency condition in the form of two sum rules (integrals over the neutrino spectra that must equal certain conserved quantities). We provide explicit analytic and numerical solutions for various neutrino spectra. We introduce the concept of the adiabatic reference frame and elaborate on the relative adiabatic evolution. Violating adiabaticity leads to the spectral split being "washed out". The sharpness of the split appears to be represented by a surprisingly universal function.

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arXiv2007

Right-Handed Neutrinos at LHC and the Mechanism of Neutrino Mass Generation

We consider the possibility to detect right-handed neutrinos, which are mostly singlets of the Standard Model gauge group, at future accelerators. Substantial mixing of these neutrinos with the active neutrinos requires a cancellation of different contributions to the light neutrino mass matrix at the level of 10^{-8}. We discuss possible symmetries behind this cancellation and argue that they always lead to conservation of total lepton number. Light neutrino masses can be generated by small perturbations violating these symmetries. In the most general case, LHC physics and the mechanism of neutrino mass generation are essentially decoupled; with additional assumptions, correlations can appear between collider observables and features of the neutrino mass matrix.

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arXiv2007

1-3 leptonic mixing and the neutrino oscillograms of the Earth

We develop a detailed and comprehensive description of neutrino oscillations driven by the 1-3 mixing in the matter of the Earth. The description is valid for the realistic (PREM) Earth density profile in the whole range of nadir angles and for neutrino energies above 1 GeV. It can be applied to oscillations of atmospheric and accelerator neutrinos. The results are presented in the form of neutrino oscillograms of the Earth, i.e. the contours of equal oscillation probabilities in the neutrino energy--nadir angle plane. A detailed physics interpretation of the oscillograms, which includes the MSW peaks, parametric ridges, local maxima, zeros and saddle points, is given in terms of the amplitude and phase conditions. Precise analytic formulas for the probabilities are obtained. We study the dependence of the oscillation pattern on theta_13 and find, in particular, that the transition probability P > 1/2 appears for sin^2(2theta_13) as small as 0.009. We consider the dependence of the oscillation pattern on the matter density profile and comment on the possibility of the oscillation tomography of the Earth.

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