Probing the Origin of Neutrino Mass: from GUT to LHC

Abstract

Ever since the Majorana classic work, the nature of neutrino has been one of the central questions of the weak interaction physics. If neutrino is its own antiparticle, the immediate consequence is lepton number violation through the neutrinoless double beta decay. However, colliders such as the LHC offer a hope of seeing directly the same phenomenon, and moreover the Majorana nature of new particles needed to complete the Standard Model. I review here the salient features of these phenomena, and then turn to grand unification as a way of probing the scale of the relevant new physics. The minimal supersymmetric SO(10) theory basically eliminates the LHC physics, but leads naturally to the large atmospheric mixing angle and furthermore predicts $\theta_{13} \simeq 10^\circ$ without any additional symmetries, in agreement with new T2K and MINOS data. It also assures that the R-parity is exact and thus leads to the stable LSP as a natural Dark Matter candidate. The minimal realistic SU(5) theory, on the other hand, predicts the light fermion triplet, below TeV, as a source of neutrino Majorana mass.