Motivated by recent hints in particle physics and cosmology, we study the realization of eV-scale sterile neutrinos within both the seesaw mechanism and flavor symmetry theories. We show that light sterile neutrinos can rather easily be accommodated in the popular A 4 flavor symmetry models. The exact tri-bimaximal mixing pattern is perturbed due to active-sterile mixing, which we discuss in detail for one example. In addition, we find an interesting extension of the type I seesaw, which can provide a natural origin for eV-scale sterile neutrinos as well as visible admixtures between sterile and active neutrinos. We also show that the presence of sterile neutrinos would significantly change the observables in neutrino experiments, specifically the oscillation probabilities in short-baseline experiments and the effective mass in neutrino-less double beta decay. The latter can prove particularly helpful in strengthening the case for eV-scale sterile neutrinos.

The various diagrams leading to neutrinoless double beta decay in the left-right symmetric model have different relative magnitudes, depending on the scale of new physics. Neutrinos acquire mass from both type I and/or type II seesaw terms, making an unambiguous analysis difficult. We study the half-life for double beta decay in the case of type II and type I dominance, in the former case including interference terms. If the heavy neutrinos of the type I seesaw model are at the TeV scale, certain processes can be enhanced. In particular, there are regions of parameter space in which the so-called λ-and η-diagrams can give sizable contributions to the half-life for the decay. We perform a detailed study of one such scenario, paying careful attention to constraints from lepton flavour violation. *

Four different neutrino mass sum-rules have been analyzed: these frequently arise in flavor symmetry models based on the groups A 4 , S 4 or T ′ , which are often constructed to generate tri-bimaximal mixing. In general, neutrino mass can be probed in three different ways, using beta decay, neutrino-less double beta decay and cosmology. The general relations between the corresponding three neutrino mass observables are well known. The sum-rules lead to relations between the observables that are different from the general case and therefore only certain regions in parameter space are allowed. Plots of the neutrino mass observables are given for the sum-rules, and analytical expressions for the observables are provided. The case of deviations from the exact sum-rules is also discussed, which can introduce new features. The sum-rules could be used to distinguish some of the many models in the literature, which all lead to the same neutrino oscillation results. *

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