Lepton mass matrices with four texture zeros

We propose two ansatze of lepton mass matrices with four texture zeros, and confront them with current experimental data on neutrino oscillations. The parameter space of each ansatz is carefully explored. We find that both ansatze can accommodate the normal hierarchy of neutrino masses and the bi-large pattern of lepton flavor mixing. Their predictions for the effective mass of the tritium beta decay and that of the neutrinoless double beta decay are too small to be detectable, but leptonic CP violation at the percent level is allowed. Some discussions are also given about the seesaw invariance of the four-zero texture of Dirac and Majorana neutrino mass matrices. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.