Majorana Neutrinos, CP-Violation, Neutrinoless Double-Beta and Tritium-Beta Decays

Abstract

If the present or upcoming searches for neutrinoless double beta decay give a positive result, the Majorana nature of massive neutrinos will be established. From the determination of the value of the effective Majorana mass parameter |<m>|, it would be possible to obtain information on the type of neutrino mass spectrum. Assuming 3-neutrino mixing and massive Majorana neutrinos, we discuss the information a measurement of, or an upper bound on, |<m>| can provide on the value of the lightest neutrino mass m1. With additional data on the neutrino masses obtained in tritium beta decay experiments, it might be possible to establish whether the CP-symmetry is violated in the lepton sector. This would require very high precision measurements. If CP-invariance holds, the allowed patterns of the relative CP-parities of the massive Majorana neutrinos would be determined.

Comments: 9 pages, Latex; 7 pages of text, 2 ps-figures. Results unchanged; few clarifying remarks added. To be published in the Proceedings of the Conference NANP'01, III International Conference on Non-Accelerator New Physics, Dubna (Russia), June 19-23 2001