Neutrinos and the Mystery of Mass
Lisa Everett
Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Abstract
The origin of the fermion mass hierarchy is one of the most compelling and mysterious questions for physics beyond the Standard Model. The discovery of neutrino oscillations and the subsequent measurements of the neutrino mass-squared differences and the lepton mixing angles over the past decade or so has reinvigorated the quest to elucidate the underlying physics that resolves this so-called ``flavor puzzle." In this talk, I will give an overview of the theoretical approaches to the flavor puzzle, with a focus on the ways in which the neutrino mass and mixing parameters have challenged and extended the basic paradigms for understanding the origin of fermion masses in the Standard Model.
