Large mixing from small: Pseudo-Dirac neutrinos and the singular see-saw

Abstract

If the sterile neutrino mass matrix in an otherwise conventional see-saw model has a rank less than the number of flavors, it is possible to produce pseudo-Dirac neutrinos. In a two-flavor, sterile rank 1 case, we demonstrate analytic conditions for large active mixing induced by the existence of (and coupling to) the sterile neutrino components. For the three-flavor, rank 1 case, "3 + 2" scenarios with large mixing also devolve naturally as we show by numerical examples. We observe that, in this approach, small mass differences can develop naturally without any requirement that masses themselves are small. Additionally, we point out that significant three-channel mixing and limited experime..