A Systematic Study of Neutrino Mixing and CP Violation from Lepton Mass Matrices with Six Texture Zeros

Abstract

We present a systematic study of 400 combinations of the charged lepton and neutrino mass matrices with six vanishing entries or texture zeros. Only 24 of them, which can be classified into a few distinct categories, are found to be compatible with current neutrino oscillation data at the $3σ$ level. A peculiar feature of the lepton mass matrices in each category is that they have the same phenomenological consequences. Taking account of a simple seesaw scenario for six parallel patterns of the charged lepton and Dirac neutrino mass matrices with six zeros, we show that it is possible to fit the experimental data at or below the $2σ$ level. In particular, the maximal atmospheric neutrino mixing can be reconciled with a strong neutrino mass hierarchy in the seesaw case. Numerical predictions are also obtained for the neutrino mass spectrum, flavor mixing angles, CP-violating phases and effective masses of the tritium beta decay and the neutrinoless double beta decay.