# REFERENCES

DSF-T-99/36

Neutrino masses and mixings in $`SO(10)`$

M. Abud, F. Buccella<sup>∗∘</sup>, D. Falcone, G. Ricciardi and F. Tramontano

Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, Università di Napoli,

Mostra d’Oltremare, Pad. 19, I-80125, Napoli, Italy,

and INFN, Sezione di Napoli, Italy;

Istituto di Fisica Teorica, Università di Napoli, Italy

## Abstract

Assuming a Zee-like matrix for the right-handed neutrino Majorana masses in the see-saw mechanism, one gets maximal mixing for vacuum solar oscillations, a very small value for $`U_{e3}`$ and an approximate degeneracy for the two lower neutrino masses. The scale of right-handed neutrino Majorana masses is in good agreement with the value expected in a $`SO(10)`$ model with Pati-Salam $`SU(4)\times SU(2)\times SU(2)`$ intermediate symmetry.

The evidence for neutrino oscillation, a phenomenon discussed many years ago , in solar  and atmospheric  neutrinos, with square mass differences smaller than $`1(eV)^2`$, has stimulated the search for theoretical framework . Unified theories with $`SO(10)`$ as a gauge group  are a natural choice, since there one expects neutrinos to be much lighter than the other fermions as a consequence of the see-saw mechanism .

$`SO(10)`$ is a suitable framework to discuss fermion masses, because all the left(right)-handed fermions of each family belong to a single irreducible representation, namely the spinorial $`\mathrm{𝟏𝟔}(\overline{\mathrm{𝟏𝟔}})`$. However, the spectrum and the mixing (the $`CKM`$ matrix) of the fermions do not show a clear $`SO(10)`$ pattern. In fact, by assuming that the electroweak Higgs belongs to a single real 10 representation, one gets the same spectrum for the charge $`\frac{2}{3}`$ and $`\frac{1}{3}`$ quarks (and at the $`SO(10)`$ unification scale also for the Dirac neutrino and charged lepton masses) and a trivial $`CKM`$ matrix. This last prediction can be thought as a zero order approximation in an expansion in $`\lambda =\mathrm{sin}(\theta _c)`$, but in order to account for the large difference between $`m_t`$ and $`m_b`$, at least one needs to assume that the two directions of the 10 with vanishing colour and electric charge have VEV’s not belonging to the same real 10 representations. In absence of components of the electroweak VEV along representations higher than 10 one keeps the equalities at the $`SO(10)`$ scale of the quark with charge $`\frac{1}{3}`$ and of the charged lepton mass matrix, as well for the quark with charge $`\frac{2}{3}`$ and the Dirac neutrino mass matrices. In that case one would have the same mixings for the quark and the Dirac lepton mass matrix and, especially for the two heaviest families, we can neglect the mixing of Dirac leptons ($`V_{cb}0.04`$).

The effective Majorana mass matrix for the light left-handed neutrinos is given by:

$$M_\nu ^{(L)}=M_D^TM_\nu ^{(R)1}M_D.$$
(1)   
$`M_\nu ^{(R)}`$ has to be symmetric and if we assume, for simplicity, CP symmetry, it is a real matrix

$`M_\nu ^{(R)}=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}M_1& \rho & \nu \\ \rho & M_2& \mu \\ \nu & \mu & M_3,\end{array}\right).`$ (5)   
The Dirac mass matrix $`M_D`$ is assumed real and diagonal, according to our approximation of neglecting the mixings:

$`M_D=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}M_{\nu _e}^D& 0& 0\\ 0& M_{\nu _\mu }^D& 0\\ 0& 0& M_{\nu _\tau }^D\end{array}\right).`$ (9)   
From the previous equations it is easy to get

$`M_\nu ^{(L)}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{D}}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\left(M_2M_3\mu ^2\right)\left(M_{\nu _e}^D\right)^2& \left(\mu \nu M_3\rho \right)M_{\nu _e}^DM_{\nu _\mu }^D& \left(\rho \mu M_2\nu \right)M_{\nu _e}^DM_{\nu _\tau }^D\\ \left(\mu \nu M_3\rho \right)M_{\nu _e}^DM_{\nu _\mu }^D& \left(M_1M_3\nu ^2\right)\left(M_{\nu _\mu }^D\right)^2& \left(\rho \nu M_1\mu \right)M_{\nu _\mu }^DM_{\nu _\tau }^D\\ \left(\rho \mu M_2\nu \right)M_{\nu _e}^DM_{\nu _\tau }^D& \left(\rho \nu M_1\mu \right)M_{\nu _\mu }^DM_{\nu _\tau }^D& \left(M_1M_2\rho ^2\right)\left(M_{\nu _\tau }^D\right)^2\end{array}\right)`$ (13)   
where

$$D\mathrm{det}M_\nu ^{(R)}=M_1M_2M_3+2\rho \nu \mu M_1\mu ^2M_2\nu ^2M_3\rho ^2.$$
(14)   
Let us make the approximation of neglecting $`M_{\nu _e}^D`$ with respect to the Dirac masses of the other neutrinos, which may be reasonable if the electroweak doublet has components only along 10 representations, which would imply

$$M_D=\frac{m_\tau }{m_b}M_{q=\frac{2}{3}},$$
(15)   
but may hold more generally, since all the charged fermions of the first family have masses smaller than those of the other two families. In that limit the matrix elements of the first row and of the first column of eq.(4) vanish and the remaining $`2\times 2`$ matrix has the property of having a vanishing eigenvalue if one takes only the contributions proportional to $`\nu ^2`$, $`\nu \rho `$ and $`\rho ^2`$. Since one of the solutions for the neutrino spectrum is the hierarchical one with the highest mass $`\frac{1}{16}eV`$, we conclude that it is an intriguing possibility to have only non-diagonal matrix elements in $`M_\nu ^{(R)}`$. A matrix with this property has been proposed many years ago by Zee  for left-handed neutrinos and its phenomenological consequences have been discussed by Frampton and Glashow  in the case of light Majorana neutrinos. We also assume a non-vanishing $`\mu `$ in order to have $`D0`$. We define

$$A_e=\mu M_{\nu _e}^D=M_0^2\mathrm{sin}\beta $$
(16)   
$$A_\mu =\nu M_{\nu _\mu }^D=M_0^2\mathrm{cos}\beta \mathrm{cos}\alpha $$
(17)   
$$A_\tau =\rho M_{\nu _\tau }^D=M_0^2\mathrm{cos}\beta \mathrm{sin}\alpha $$
(18)   
and get

$$M_\nu ^{(L)}=\frac{1}{D}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}A_e^2& A_eA_\mu & A_eA_\tau \\ A_eA_\mu & A_\mu ^2& A_\mu A_\tau \\ A_eA_\tau & A_\mu A_\tau & A_\tau ^2\end{array}\right)$$

$$=\frac{M_0^4}{D}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\mathrm{sin}^2\beta & \mathrm{sin}\beta \mathrm{cos}\beta \mathrm{cos}\alpha & \mathrm{sin}\beta \mathrm{cos}\beta \mathrm{sin}\alpha \\ \mathrm{sin}\beta \mathrm{cos}\beta \mathrm{cos}\alpha & \mathrm{cos}^2\beta \mathrm{cos}^2\alpha & \mathrm{cos}^2\beta \mathrm{cos}\alpha \mathrm{sin}\alpha \\ \mathrm{sin}\beta \mathrm{cos}\beta \mathrm{sin}\alpha & \mathrm{cos}^2\beta \mathrm{cos}\alpha \mathrm{sin}\alpha & \mathrm{cos}^2\beta \mathrm{sin}^2\alpha \end{array}\right),$$
(19)   
whose eigenvalues obey the secular equation

$$m_i^3m_i^2\frac{A_e^2+A_\mu ^2+A_\tau ^2}{D}+\frac{4A_e^2A_\mu ^2A_\tau ^2}{D^3}=0(i=1,2,3).$$
(20)   
The absence of the linear term in eq.(11) implies for the three solutions the relation

$$m_1m_2+m_1m_3+m_2m_3=0.$$
(21)   
If $`m_3`$ is larger than the other two solutions, one has that $`m_1`$ and $`m_2`$ are almost opposite, more precisely

$$m_1+m_2=\frac{m_1m_2}{m_3}.$$
(22)   
The ratios of the solutions of eq.(11) depend on the quantity

$$k^2=\frac{4A_e^2A_\mu ^2A_\tau ^2}{\left(A_e^2+A_\mu ^2+A_\tau ^2\right)^3}=\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{sin}^22\alpha \mathrm{sin}^22\beta \mathrm{cos}^2\beta $$
(23)   
which should be small in order to have one solution larger than the other two. In this case one has approximately, to lowest order in $`k`$

$$m_3\frac{A_e^2+A_\mu ^2+A_\tau ^2}{D}=\frac{M_0^4}{D}$$
(24)   
$$|m_1||m_2|\frac{2A_eA_\mu A_\tau }{D\sqrt{A_e^2+A_\mu ^2+A_\tau ^2}}=k\frac{M_0^4}{D}$$
(25)   
and

$$m_1+m_2\frac{4A_e^2A_\mu ^2A_\tau ^2}{D\left(A_e^2+A_\mu ^2+A_\tau ^2\right)^2}=k^2\frac{M_0^4}{D}$$
(26)   
which imply

$$m_{1,2}k\frac{M_0^4}{D}\left(1+\frac{k}{2}\right)$$
(27)   
and

$$m_2^2m_1^2=2k^3\frac{M_0^8}{D^2}.$$
(28)   
Under these assumptions, $`m_3^2`$ and $`m_2^2m_1^2`$ have to be identified with the values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{sun}^2`$, the quantities that are relevant for the oscillations of the atmospheric and solar neutrinos. The parameter $`k`$ is so recovered to be

$$k^3=\frac{1}{2}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }m_{sun}^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2}.$$
(29)   
The absence of the distortion (which is predicted by the MSW solution) of the spectrum, according to the new data of SuperKamiokande with a lower threshold (5 MeV) for the electron detection, has brought Bilenky, Giunti and Grimus  to consider the vacuum solution as the most probable with the following parameters

$$\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{atm}=1,\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2=3.5\times 10^3\mathrm{eV}.$$
(30)   
$$\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{sun}=0.8,\mathrm{\Delta }m_{sun}^2=4.3\times 10^{10}\mathrm{eV}.$$
(31)   
From eq.(20),(21) and (22) we get

$$k=4\times 10^3.$$
(32)   
In order to have a small value for $`k`$, at least one of the $`A`$’s defined in eqs.(7),(8) and (9) should be smaller than the others. The most natural choice is $`A_e`$, since it is proportional to the Dirac mass of $`\nu _e`$, that corresponds to a small value for the $`\beta `$ angle. In this case $`k\beta \mathrm{sin}2\alpha `$, and we are naturally brought to a small value for $`U_{e3}`$ and to a large value for the angle intervening in the solar neutrino oscillations.

In fact, the exact eigenvalues of eq.(11) are

$$m_3=\frac{M_0^4}{D}\left(\frac{1}{3}+\frac{2}{3}\mathrm{cos}\psi \right)$$
(33)   
$$m_{2,1}=\frac{M_0^4}{D}\left[\frac{1}{3}(1\mathrm{cos}\psi )\pm \frac{\sqrt{3}}{3}\mathrm{sin}\psi \right]$$
(34)   
with $`\psi `$ given by

$$\mathrm{cos}3\psi =1\frac{27}{2}k^2.$$
(35)   
The corresponding eigenvectors, in terms of $`\lambda _i=m_i\frac{D}{M_0^4}`$ are given by

$$a_i\left(\begin{array}{c}2\lambda _i(\lambda _i\mathrm{cos}^2\beta )\\ \mathrm{sin}2\beta \mathrm{cos}\alpha (\lambda _i+2\mathrm{cos}^2\beta \mathrm{sin}^2\alpha )\\ \mathrm{sin}2\beta \mathrm{sin}\alpha (\lambda _i2\mathrm{cos}^2\beta \mathrm{cos}^2\alpha )\end{array}\right)$$
(36)   
where the $`a_i`$ are the appropriate normalization factors, to have unit norm vectors. Developing in the small parameter $`\beta `$, to lowest order, we get:

$$|U_{e3}|\beta \mathrm{cos}2\alpha k\mathrm{cot}2\alpha $$
(37)   
$$\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{sun}=\frac{4U_{e1}^2U_{e2}^2}{(|U_{e1}|^2+|U_{e2}|^2)^2}\left(1\frac{k^2}{4}\right)+O(k^3).$$
(38)   
For small $`k`$, the mixing angle for atmospheric neutrinos may be identified with $`\alpha `$ and the high value for $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{atm}`$ implies a very small value for $`|U_{e3}|`$, well below the limit $`|U_{e3}|^2<0.05`$ , from the CHOOZ experiment . Eq. (38) implies that $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{sun}`$ is practically equal to the maximal value.

For $`\alpha =\pi /4`$ one has, exactly to all orders, $`U_{e3}=0`$ and maximal mixing for atmospheric neutrinos. In that case the mixing matrix, in the limit $`k=0`$, is the one with bimaximal mixing proposed in ref.

$`\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}& \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}& 0\\ \frac{1}{2}& \frac{1}{2}& \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\\ \frac{1}{2}& \frac{1}{2}& \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\end{array}\right).`$ (42)   
A scenario similar to the one proposed here can be found in ref. with an appropriate choice of the Dirac neutrino mass and an antidiagonal form for the Majorana mass matrix for right-handed neutrinos (in our notation with only $`\nu `$ and $`M_2`$ different from zero). Also in that paper the ratio of the scales for solar and atmospheric neutrino oscillations are given in terms of an expansion parameter in such a way that, when it vanishes gives also rise to the bimaximal mixing (30). Also there the two lower mass neutrino eigenstates are almost degenerate. The resulting matrices for the two cases are different as well the secular equation for the mass eigenstates, which brings to a value for the mass of the almost degenerate lighter neutrinos $`\sqrt[3]{2}`$ larger than the value given in ref., a difference which unfortunately seems very far from experimental detection. Another difference concerns the matrix element $`M_{ee}`$, which appears in the double $`\beta `$-decay, which is predicted to vanish in , but as we shall see later, the non-vanishing value predicted here is completely negligible for the vacuum solution.

It is the right moment to remind that we have neglected the rotation between the charged lepton and the Dirac neutrino mass matrices. This approximation is reasonable if we assume that electroweak Higgs has components only along 10 representations of $`SO(10)`$ since in that case this solution is given by the CKM matrix, which has small non-diagonal matrix elements. We are aware that the inequality $`m_\mu m_b>m_\tau m_s`$ requires some component of the electroweak Higgs along some higher representation .

In $`SO(10)`$ the scale for the right-handed neutrino masses is related to the scale of $`BL`$ symmetry breaking  and therefore it is interesting to see which values of $`\mu `$, $`\nu `$, $`\rho `$ are needed to get the values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{sun}^2`$. To the purpose of getting the right order of magnitude, one can assume eq.(6) and $`\alpha =\pi /4`$, which implies the value of $`\mu `$

$$\mu =\left(\frac{m_\tau }{m_b}\right)^2\frac{m_cm_t}{m_3}7.5\times 10^{11}GeV.$$
(43)   
We have taken $`m_3=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2}=6\times 10^2`$ eV and, as reference values, the masses at the scale $`M_Z`$: $`m_u=2.3\times 10^3`$ GeV, $`m_c=0.67`$ GeV, $`m_b=3.0`$ GeV, $`m_t=181`$ GeV and $`m_\tau =1.75`$ GeV . Anyway, since our quantities depend only on the ratios of the quark masses, a strong dependence on the scale is not expected.

We also have

$$\nu =\mu \frac{m_u}{m_c}\frac{A_\mu }{A_e}=4.6\times 10^{11}\mathrm{GeV},$$
(44)   
$$\rho =\nu \frac{m_c}{m_t}=1.7\times 10^9\mathrm{GeV}.$$
(45)   
The rather moderate values for the matrix elements of $`M_\nu ^{(R)}`$ are a consequence of the approximate degeneracy of the two lower neutrino mass eigenstate, which makes

$$m_{1,2}\sqrt{\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }m_{sun}^2}{2}}\left(\frac{2\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }m_{sun}^2}\right)^{1/6}\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }m_{sun}^2}$$
(46)   
while with the hierarchical relationship $`m_2>m_1`$ one should have

$$m_1m_2\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }m_{sun}^2},$$
(47)   
and the opposite inequality with respect to eq.(34). In fact from the eqs.(1),(2),(5) and (6), and $`m_3\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2}`$, one would get

$$D=\frac{R^3m_u^2m_c^2m_t^2}{m_1m_2m_3}2\times 10^{35}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }m_{sun}^2}{m_1m_2}GeV^3$$
(48)   
($`R=(m_\tau /m_b)^2`$) and the inequality (34) brings to a lower value for D. Also the approximate degeneracy between $`m_2`$ and $`m_1`$ allows to get a not too broad neutrino mass spectrum.

For the first diagonal matrix elements of the Majorana mass one finds as order of magnitude

$$M_{ee}=\frac{km_u^2\mu }{2\rho \nu }1.2\times 10^6eV;$$
(49)   
much smaller than the present experimental limit ($`0.2eV`$).

It is worth to recall that a value $`2.8\times 10^{11}GeV`$ has been found  for the scale of spontaneous breaking of $`BL`$ in the $`SO(10)`$ model with $`SU(4)\times SU(2)\times SU(2)`$ intermediate symmetry , which is broken by a VEV of the 126 representation, endowed with the right quantum numbers to give Majorana masses to the right-handed neutrino. Above that scale, $`SU(4)_{PS}`$ for quarks and leptons implies that their mass ratios do not change. The narrow range for the evolution of $`m_b/m_\tau `$ is not enough to get $`m_b=m_\tau `$ at that scale  as required by the hypothesis that the electroweak Higgs VEV’s are only along 10 representations, but at least a smaller contribution from other representation is needed with respect to the case where the range of RGE for the mass ratio extends to the unification scale, at which the lepto-quarks responsible for proton decay take their mass.

As a conclusion we think that the choice of the Zee matrix  for the right-handed neutrino Majorana masses seems very appealing for the vacuum solution of the solar neutrino problem and well consistent with the scale found in the $`SO(10)`$ model with Pati-Salam intermediate symmetry.

One of us (F. B.) gratefully acknowledges stimulating discussions with Profs. Z. Berezhiani and A. Masiero.