The doublet Majoron model and solar neutrino oscillations

We present a minimal extension of the standard electroweak theory which, as a consequence of the spontaneous breaking of lepton number and the radiative origin of the neutrino mass, offers a natural framework for the solution of the solar neutrino problem through matter-enhanced neutrino oscillations (Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein mechanism). Indeed, we show that the presently available astrophysical bounds on the lepton-breaking vacuum expectation value naturally lead to neutrino masses in the required regime. The fact that the Majoron belongs to an SU(2)L doublet and not a triplet has relevant phenomenological implications. In particular, the scalar contribution to the Z0 width is four times smaller than in the triplet model and equivalent to 1/2 a neutrino-antineutrino mode. Relevant effects related to the presence of two physical singly charged scalars, both at the quantum and tree level, are studied. As a result we find that the model is tightly constrained by present data. In particular, for a wide range of parameters, the decay μ→eγ is within two orders of magnitude from the present experimental limit. (orig.)