Maximal atmospheric neutrino mixing in an SU(5) model

We show that maximal atmospheric and large solar neutrino mixing can be implemented in SU(5) gauge theories, by making use of the $U(1)_F$ symmetry associated with a suitably defined family number $F$, together with a $\mathbbm{Z}_2$ symmetry which does not commute with $F$. $U(1)_F$ is softly broken by the mass terms of the right-handed neutrino singlets, which are responsible for the seesaw mechanism; in addition, $U(1)_F$ is also spontaneously broken at the electroweak scale. In our scenario, lepton mixing stems exclusively from the right-handed-neutrino Majorana mass matrix, whereas the CKM matrix originates solely in the up-type-quark sector. We show that, despite the non-supersymmetric character of our model, unification of the gauge couplings can be achieved at a scale $10^{16} \mathrm{GeV} < m_U < 10^{19} \mathrm{GeV}$; indeed, we have found a particular solution to this problem which yields results almost identical to the ones of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model.