Predicting neutrinoless double beta decay in the A4 family symmetry model

We give predictions for the neutrinoless double beta decay rate in a simple variant of the A4 family symmetry model. We show that there is a lower bound for the neutrinoless double beta decay amplitude even in the case of normal hierarchical neutrino masses, corresponding to an effective mass parameter larger than or equal to 0.17 the atmospheric neutrino mass scale. This result holds both for the CP conserving and CP violating cases. In the latter case we show explicitly that the lower bound on the effective mass parameter is sensitive to the value of the Majorana phase. We conclude therefore that in our scheme, neutrinoless double beta decay may be accessible to the next generation of high sensitivity experiments. (author)