There is now convincing evidence that the Standard Model of electroweak and strong interactions is not the end of the story but only a low energy effective theory. In particular, new flavour physics is required to explain the fermion mass spectrum. Most of the proposed extensions of the Standard Model fail to meet this criterion. We may hope that the LHC or some future colliders could help to clarify the situation by discovering new particles or spotting some unexpected events. In the meantime, more precise measurements of masses and mixing parameters could also play an important role. In this work, we do not aim at finding a new mechanism that could explain this spectrum, but we rather assume that fermion masses and mixings are calculable in a yet-to-be-found more fundamental theory. Our goal is to glean as much information as possible from the observed fermion masses and mixings in order to find some hidden structures that could significantly lower the number of free parameters and help us to get some clues about what could be this fundamental theory. We analyse first the various parametrizations of the flavour mixing and single out a specific decomposition. The parameters of this decomposition can be independently and accurately computed if we impose some simple textures to the Yukawa couplings. We propose then a straightforward combination of these interesting textures which reproduces quite well the observed quark flavour mixing. We study then the properties of a successful mass relation for the charged leptons. We propose some generalizations of this relation in order to be valid also for the neutrinos and the quarks. One of them successfully combines the masses and mixings while another one describes the lepton masses via an accurate geometric description. Hopefully, these two studies lead to similar conclusions and allow us to speculate on some interesting properties for new flavour physics.

The existence of at or curved extra spatial dimensions provides new insights into several of the problems which face the Standard Model of particle physics, including the gauge hierarchy problem, the smallness of neutrino masses, and the dark matter problem. However, higher-dimensional gauge theories are not renormalizable and can only be considered as low-energy effective theories, with limited applicability. Dimensional deconstruction provides a class of manifestly gauge invariant possible ultraviolet completions of higher-dimensional gauge theories, formulated within conventional quantum eld theory. In dimensional deconstruction, the fundamental theory is a four-dimensional quantum eld theory and extra spatial dimensions are generated dynamically at low energies. In this thesis, we study di erent applications of dimensional deconstruction in the contexts of neutrino masses, mixing and oscillations, Kaluza{Klein dark matter, and e ective eld theories for discretized higher-dimensional gravity. A different possibility to understand the smallness of neutrino masses is provided by the see-saw mechanism. This is a genuinely four-dimensional mechanism, where the light neutrino masses are induced by the addition of heavy right-handed Majorana neutrinos or by other heavy degrees of freedom, such as scalar SU(2)L triplet elds. It has the attractive feature of simultaneously providing a mechanism for generating the observed baryon asymmetry of the Universe. We study in this context a specific left-right symmetric see-saw model. / QC 20100716

<p>This thesis is devoted to the study of neutrino physics in general and the study of neutrino mixing and oscillations in particular. In the standard model of particle physics, neutrinos are massless, and as a result, they do not mix or oscillate. However, many experimental results now seem to give evidence for neutrino oscillations, and thus, the standard model has to be extended in order to incorporate neutrino masses and mixing among different neutrino flavors.</p><p>When neutrinos propagate through matter, the neutrino mixing, and thus, also the neutrino oscillations, may be significantly altered. While the matter effects may be easily studied in a framework with only two neutrino flavors and constant matter density, we know that there exists (at least) three neutrino flavors and that the matter density of the Universe is far from constant. This thesis includes studies of three-flavor effects and a solution to the two-flavor neutrino oscillation problem in matter with an arbitrary density profile.</p><p>Furthermore, there have historically been attempts to describe the neutrino flavor transitions by other effects than neutrino oscillations. Even if these effects now seem to be disfavored as the leading mechanism, they may still give small corrections to the neutrino oscillation formulas. These effects may lead to erroneous determination of the fundamental neutrino oscillation parameters and are also studied in this thesis in form of damping factors.</p>

This thesis is devoted to the study of neutrino physics in general and the study of neutrino mixing and oscillations in particular. In the standard model of particle physics, neutrinos are massless, and as a result, they do not mix or oscillate. However, many experimental results now seem to give evidence for neutrino oscillations, and thus, the standard model has to be extended in order to incorporate neutrino masses and mixing among different neutrino flavors. When neutrinos propagate through matter, the neutrino mixing, and thus, also the neutrino oscillations, may be significantly altered. While the matter effects may be easily studied in a framework with only two neutrino flavors and constant matter density, we know that there exists (at least) three neutrino flavors and that the matter density of the Universe is far from constant. This thesis includes studies of three-flavor effects and a solution to the two-flavor neutrino oscillation problem in matter with an arbitrary density profile. Furthermore, there have historically been attempts to describe the neutrino flavor transitions by other effects than neutrino oscillations. Even if these effects now seem to be disfavored as the leading mechanism, they may still give small corrections to the neutrino oscillation formulas. These effects may lead to erroneous determination of the fundamental neutrino oscillation parameters and are also studied in this thesis in form of damping factors. / QC 20101124

This thesis is devoted to the theory and phenomenology of neutrino physics. While the standard model of particle physics has been extremely successful, it fails to account for massive neutrinos, which are necessary to describe the observations of neutrino oscillations made by several different experiments. Thus, neutrino physics is a possible window for exploring the physics beyond the standard model, making it both interesting and important for our fundamental understanding of Nature. Throughout this thesis, we will discuss different aspects of neutrino physics, ranging from taking all three types of neutrinos into account in neutrino oscillation experiments to exploring the possibilities of neutrino mass models to produce a viable source of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe. The emphasis of the thesis is on neutrino oscillations which, given their implication of neutrino masses, is a phenomenon where other results that are not describable in the standard model could be found, such as new interactions between neutrinos and fermions. / QC 20100630