We investigate the effects of a nonzero leptonic mixing angle theta(13) on the solar neutrino day-night asymmetry. Using a constant matter density profile for the Earth and well-motivated approximations, we derive analytical expressions for the nu(e) survival probabilities for solar neutrinos arriving directly at the detector and for solar neutrinos which have passed through the Earth. Furthermore, we numerically study the effects of a nonzero theta(13) on the day-night asymmetry at detectors and find that they are small. Finally, we show that if the uncertainties in the parameters theta(12) and Deltam(2) as well as the uncertainty in the day-night asymmetry itself were much smaller than they are today, this effect could, in principle, be used to determine theta(13).

In this paper, we present a real nonlinear differential equation for the two flavor neutrino oscillation problem in matter with an arbitrary density profile. We also present an exact series solution to this nonlinear differential equation. In addition, we investigate numerically the convergence of this solution for different matter density profiles such as constant and linear profiles as well as the Preliminary Reference Earth Model describing the Earth's matter density profile. Finally, we discuss other methods used for solving the neutrino flavor evolution problem.

We investigate the effective case of two-flavor neutrino oscillations in infinitely dense matter by using a perturbative approach. We begin by briefly summarizing the conditions for the three-flavor neutrino oscillation probabilities to take on the same form as the corresponding two-flavor probabilities. Then, we proceed with the infinitely dense matter calculations. Finally, we study the validity of the approximation of infinitely dense matter when the effective matter potential is large, but not infinite, this is done by using both analytic and numeric methods.

We discuss the phenomenology of damping signatures in the neutrino oscillation probabilities, where either the oscillating terms or the probabilities can be damped. This approach is a possibility for tests of damping effects in future neutrino oscillation experiments, where we mainly focus on reactor and long-baseline experiments. We extensively motivate different damping signatures due to small corrections by neutrino decoherence, neutrino decay, oscillations into sterile neutrinos, or other mechanisms, and classify these signatures according to their energy ( spectral) dependencies. We demonstrate, at the example of short baseline reactor experiments, that damping can severely alter the interpretation of results, e. g., it could fake a value of sin(2)(2 theta(13)) smaller than the one provided by Nature. In addition, we demonstrate how a neutrino factory could constrain different damping models with emphasis on how these different models could be distinguished, i.e., how easily the actual type of effect could be identified. We find that the damping models cluster in different categories, which can be much better distinguished from each other than models within the same cluster.

We investigate non-standard Hamiltonian effects on neutrino oscillations, which are effective additional contributions to the vacuum or matter Hamiltonian. Since these effects can enter in either the flavor or mass basis, we develop an understanding of the difference between these bases representing the underlying theoretical model. In particular, the simplest of these effects are classified as "pure" flavor or mass effects, where the appearance of such a "pure" effect can be quite plausible as a leading non-standard contribution from theoretical models. Compared to earlier studies investigating particular effects, we aim for a top-down classification of a possible "new physics" signature at future long-baseline neutrino oscillation precision experiments. We develop a general framework for such effects with two neutrino flavors and discuss the extension to three neutrino flavors, and we demonstrate the challenges for a neutrino factory to distinguish the theoretical origin of these effects with a numerical example as well. We find how the precision measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters can be altered by non-standard effects alone (not including non-standard interactions in the creation and detection processes) and that the non-standard effects on Hamiltonian level can be distinguished from other non-standard effects (such as neutrino decoherence and decay) if we consider the specific imprint of the effects on the energy spectra of several different oscillation channels at a neutrino factory.

We investigate the effects of non-standard interactions on the determination of the neutrino oscillation parameters Delta m(31)(2), theta(23), and theta(13) in the MINOS experiment. We show that adding non-standard interactions to the analysis lead to an extension of the allowed parameter space to larger values of Delta m(31)(2) and smaller theta(23), and basically removes all predictability for theta(13). In addition, we discuss the sensitivities to the non-standard interaction parameters of the MINOS experiment alone. In particular, we examine the degeneracy between theta(13) and the non-standard interaction parameter epsilon(e tau). We find that this degeneracy is responsible for the removal of the theta(13) predictability and that the possible bound on vertical bar epsilon(e tau)vertical bar is competitive with direct bounds only if a more stringent external bound on theta(13) is applied.

We analyze the left-right symmetric type I+II seesaw mechanism, where an eight-fold degeneracy among the mass matrices of heavy right-handed neutrinos M-R is known to exist. Using the stability property of the solutions and their ability to lead to successful baryogenesis via leptogenesis as additional criteria, we discriminate among these eight solutions and partially lift their eight-fold degeneracy. In particular, we find that viable leptogenesis is generically possible for four out of the eight solutions.