APPROXIMATE FLAVOR SYMMETRIES IN THE LEPTON SECTOR

Approximate flavor symmetries in the quark sector have been used as a handle on physics beyond the standard model. Because of the great interest in neutrino masses and mixings and the wealth of existing and proposed neutrino experiments it is important to extend this analysis to the leptonic sector. We show that in the seesaw mechanism the neutrino masses and mixing angles do not depend on the details of the right-handed neutrino flavor symmetry breaking, and are related by a simple formula. We propose several Ansatze which relate different flavor symmetry-breaking parameters and find that the MSW solution to the solar neutrino problem is always easily fit. Further, the nu(mu)-nu(tau) oscillation is unlikely to solve the atmospheric neutrino problem and, if we fix the neutrino mass scale by the MSW solution, the neutrino masses are found to be too small to close the Universe.