We study the effects of considering nontrivial unphysical lepton sector phases on the group theoretical properties of the flavor and generalized $CP$ symmetry elements in the case where there are three light, distinct Majorana neutrino species. We highlight the similarities and differences between the charged lepton and neutrino sectors and further elucidate the group properties of the flavor and generalized $CP$ symmetry elements. We show how the inclusion of these leptonic phases affects the bottom-up constructions of these symmetry elements and discuss the implications for top-down model building based on discrete symmetry groups.

• Received 23 March 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.96.035030