Possible deviation from the tri-bimaximal neutrino mixing in a seesaw model

Abstract

We propose a simple but suggestive seesaw model with two phenomenological conjectures: three heavy (right-handed) Majorana neutrinos are degenerate in mass in the symmetry limit and three light Majorana neutrinos have the tri-bimaximal mixing pattern ${V}_{0}$. We show that a small mass splitting between the first generation and the other two generations of heavy Majorana neutrinos is responsible for the deviation of the solar neutrino mixing angle ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{12}$ from its initial value $35.3\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}$ given by ${V}_{0}$, and the slight breaking of the mass degeneracy between the second and third generations of heavy Majorana neutrinos results in a small mixing angle ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{13}$ and a tiny departure of the atmospheric neutrino mixing angle ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{23}$ from $45\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}$. It turns out that a normal hierarchy of the light neutrino mass spectrum is favored in this seesaw scenario.