The Nature of Massive Neutrinos

Abstract

The compelling experimental evidences for oscillations of solar, reactor, atmospheric, and accelerator neutrinos imply the existence of 3-neutrino mixing in the weak charged lepton current. The current data on the 3-neutrino mixing parameters are summarised and the phenomenology of 3- ν mixing is reviewed. The properties of massive Majorana neutrinos and of their various possible couplings are discussed in detail. Two models of neutrino mass generation with massive Majorana neutrinos—the type I see-saw and the Higgs triplet model—are briefly reviewed. The problem of determining the nature, Dirac or Majorana, of massive neutrinos is considered. The predictions for the effective Majorana mass | 〈 m 〉 | in neutrinoless double-beta-( ( β β ) 0 ν -) decay in the case of 3-neutrino mixing and massive Majorana neutrinos are summarised. The physics potential of the experiments, searching for ( β β ) 0 ν -decay for providing information on the type of the neutrino mass spectrum, on the absolute scale of neutrino masses, and on the Majorana CP-violation phases in the PMNS neutrino mixing matrix, is also briefly discussed. The opened questions and the main goals of future research in the field of neutrino physics are outlined.