Neutrino mass and mixing: from theory to experiment

Abstract

The origin of fermion mass hierarchies and mixings is one of the unresolved and most difficult problems in high-energy physics. One possibility to address the flavour problems is by extending the standard model to include a family symmetry. In the recent years it has become very popular to use non-Abelian discrete flavour symmetries because of their power in the prediction of the large leptonic mixing angles relevant for neutrino oscillation experiments. Here we give an introduction to the flavour problem and to discrete groups that have been used to attempt a solution for it. We review the current status of models in light of the recent measurement of the reactor angle, and we consider different model-building directions taken. The use of the flavons or multi-Higgs scalars in model building is discussed as well as the direct versus indirect approaches. We also focus on the possibility of experimentally distinguishing flavour symmetry models by means of mixing sum rules and mass sum rules. In fact, we illustrate in this review the complete path from mathematics, via model building, to experiments, so that any reader interested in starting work in the field could use this text as a starting point in order to obtain a broad overview of the different subject areas.