Neutrino mass: From LHC to grand unification

Abstract

The tiny neutrino masses and the associated large lepton mixings provide an interesting puzzle and a likely window to the physics beyond the standard model. This is certainly true if neutrinos are Majorana particles, since then, unlike in the Dirac case, the standard model is not a complete theory. The Majorana case leads to lepton number violation manifested through neutrinoless-double-beta decay and same-sign dileptons potentially accessible to colliders such as the LHC. This is covered at length. I discuss in these lectures possible theories of neutrino mass whose predictions are dictated by their structure only and this points strongly to grand unification. I cover in detail both SU(5) and SO(10) grand unified theories, and study the predictions of their minimal versions. The main message I wish to bring across is a serious hope of probing the origin of neutrino mass in near future, through the combined effort of high-energy collider and low-energy lepton number and lepton flavor violation experiments.