Origin of neutrino mass: will we ever know?
Ray Volkas School of Physics The University of Melbourne
CERN Theory Colloquium at “Neutrinos: the quest for a new physics scale”, 29 March 2017. 1. What we know, don’t know and want to know. 2. Theνexperimental program. 3. Schemes for Majoranaνmass generation: A. Type-1,2,3 seesaw models. B. Inverse and linear seesaw mechanisms. C. Radiative neutrino mass models. 4. Beyond theνexperimental program. 5. Will we ever know? 1. What we know, don’t know and want to know. On the origin of mass in general:
A. Nucleon mass
QCD field energy.
Non-perturbative.
Dynamical chiral symmetry breaking.
Fundamental parameter
is ΛQCD ~ 220 MeV. Dimensional transmutation.
Low masses of pions are Credit: universe-review.ca understood. B. Quark, charged-lepton, W, Z masses
Higgs-induced spontaneous EW symmetry breaking.
Tree-level perturbative.
Fundamental parameter is Higgs VEV ~ 250 GeV.
W, Z, t masses are near this scale. Others a lot smaller: ascribed to small Yukawa coupling constants. C. Dark matter mass(es)
Unknown.
Speculations range from 10-5 eV axions to 105 solar mass primordial black holes!
But we do know that ρdark ≈ 5ρbaryon. If ρi= mi ni then this observation suggests ndark ~ nbaryon and mdark ~ mproton – asymmetric dark matter. Is mdark explained by strong QCD-like dynamics? D. Neutrino masses (and mixings)
We have now measured some, but not all, neutrino parameters quite precisely.
Review in coming slides.
Credit: Mainz U
The absolute neutrino mass scale has a lab upper limit of 2 eV and cosmo limit of about 0.2 eV.
How do nu masses arise, and why are they so small?
Credit: KATRIN Recent global fits to neutrino flavour-transformation data: Esteban+ 1611.01514, JHEP 1701 (2017) 087 Capozzi+ 1601.07777, NPB 908 (2016) 218 Forero+ 1405.7540, PRD90 (2014) 093006
Definition of PMNS matrix:
⌫e Ue1 Ue2 Ue3 ⌫1 ⌫1,2,3 mass Δm2 = solar ⌫ = U U U ⌫ 12 µ µ1 µ2 µ3 2 estates Δm2 ~Δm2 = atmos. 2 3 2 3 2 3 32 31 ⌫⌧ U⌧1 U⌧2 U⌧3 ⌫3 m1,2,3 4 5 4 5 4 5 Standard parameterisation:
i c12c13 s12c13 s13e 10 0 s c c s s ei c c s s s ei s c 0 ei↵1/2 0 2 12 23 12 23 13 12 23 12 23 13 23 13 3 2 3 s s c c s ei c s s c s ei c c 00ei↵2/2 12 23 12 23 13 12 23 12 23 13 23 13 4 5 4 5 ✓12 = solar angle = Dirac phase ✓ = atmospheric angle 23 ↵1,2 = Majorana phases ✓13 = reactor angle Oscillation probability formula:
2 2 mijL P↵ = ↵ 4 Re(U↵⇤iU iU↵jU ⇤j)sin ! 4E i>j ! X 2 mijL +2 Im(U ⇤ U U U ⇤ )sin ↵i i ↵j j 2E i>j ! X