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Abstract

Models based on flavor symmetries are the most often studied approaches to explain the unexpected structure of lepton mixing. In many flavor symmetry groups a product of two triplet representations contains a symmetric and an anti-symmetric term. If this product of two triplets corresponds to a Majorana mass term, then the anti-symmetric part vanishes, and in economic models tri-bimaximal mixing is achieved. If neutrinos are Dirac particles, the anti-symmetric part is however present and leads to deviations from tri-bimaximal mixing, in particular non-zero U(e3). Thus, the non-vanishing value of U(e3) and the nature of the neutrino are connected. We illustrate this with a model based on A(4) within the framework of a neutrinophilic 2 Higgs doublet scenario.