Abstract: Prompted by the recent Dresden-II reactor data, we examine its implications for the determination of the weak mixing angle, paying attention to the effect of the quenching function. We also determine the resulting constraints on the unitarity of the neutrino mixing matrix, as well as on the most general type of nonstandard neutral-current neutrino interactions.

Abstract: We study the implications of generalized CP transformations acting on the mass matrices of charged leptons in a model-independent way. Generalized e – mu, e – tau and μ- tau symmetries are considered in detail. In all cases the physical parameters of the lepton mixing matrix, three mixing angles and three CP phases can be expressed in terms of a restricted set of independent “theory parameters” that characterize a given choice of CP transformation. This leads to implications for neutrino oscillations as well as neutrinoless double beta decay experiments.

Abstract: In light of the recent R-K(*) data on neutral current flavor anomalies in B -> K-(*())l(+)l(-) decays, we reexamine their quantitative interpretation in terms of an extended 331 gauge theory framework. We achieve this by adding two extra lepton species with novel 331 charges, while ensuring that the model remains anomaly-free. In contrast to the canonical 331 models, the gauge charges of the first and second lepton families differ from each other, allowing lepton-flavor universality violation. We further expand the model by adding the neutral fermions required to provide an adequate description for small neutrino masses.

Abstract: We investigate the production of primordial Gravitational Waves (GWs) arising from First Order Phase Transitions (FOPTs) associated to neutrino mass generation in the context of type-I and inverse seesaw schemes. We examine both “high-scale” as well as “low-scale” variants, with either explicit or spontaneously broken lepton number symmetry U(1)(L), in the neutrino sector. In the latter case, a pseudo-Goldstone majoron-like boson may provide a candidate for cosmological dark matter. We find that schemes with softly-broken U(1)(L), and with single Higgs-doublet scalar sector lead to either no FOPTs or too weak FOPTs, precluding the detestability of GWs in present or near future measurements. Nevertheless, we found that, in the majoron-like seesaw scheme with spontaneously broken U(1)(L), at finite temperatures, one can have strong FOPTs and non-trivial primordial GW spectra which can fall well within the frequency and amplitude sensitivity of upcoming experiments, including LISA, BBO and u-DECIGO. However, GWs observability clashes with invisible Higgs decay constraints from the LHC. A simple and consistent fix is to assume the majoron-like mass to lie above the Higgs-decay kinematical threshold. We also found that the majoron-like variant of the low-scale seesaw mechanism implies a different GW spectrum than the one expected in the high-scale seesaw. This feature will be testable in future experiments. Our analysis shows that GWs can provide a new and complementary portal to test the neutrino mass generation mechanism.

Abstract: A simple variant of a realistic flavor symmetry scheme for fermion masses and mixings provides a possible interpretation of the diphoton anomaly as an electroweak singlet “flavon.” The existence of TeV scale vectorlike T-quarks required to provide adequate values for Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) parameters can also naturally account for the diphoton anomaly. Correlations between V-ub and V-cb with the vectorlike T-quark mass can be predicted. Should the diphoton anomaly survive in a future run, our proposed interpretation can also be tested in upcoming B and LHC studies.