The leptonic Dirac CP-violating phase from sum rules

Abstract

In the reference 3-neutrino mixing scheme with three light massive neutrinos, CP-violating effects in neutrino oscillations can be caused by the Dirac CP-violating phase δ present in the unitary neutrino mixing matrix U. Using the fact that U = U†eUv, where Ue and Uv are unitary matrices arising from the diagonalisation, respectively, of the charged lepton and neutrino mass matrices, we consider in a systematic way forms of Ue and Uv allowing us to express δ as a function of the neutrino mixing angles present in U and the angles contained in Uv. After obtaining sum rules for cos δ, we consider several forms of Uv dictated by, or associated with, symmetries, such as tri-bimaximal, bimaximal, etc., for which the angles in Uv are fixed. For each of these forms and forms of Ue allowing to reproduce the measured values of the neutrino mixing angles, we construct the likelihood function for cos δ, using the prospective uncertainties in the determination of the mixing angles. Our results show that the measurement of δ along with improvement of the precision on the neutrino mixing angles can provide unique information about the possible existence of a new fundamental symmetry in the lepton sector.