Universal 23 symmetry

The possible maximal mixing seen in the oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos has led to the postulate of mu-tau symmetry, which interchanges nu(mu) and nu(tau). We argue that such a symmetry need not be special to neutrinos but can be extended to all fermions. The assumption that all fermion mass matrices are approximately invariant under the interchange of the second and the third generation fields is shown to be phenomenologically viable and has interesting consequences. In the quark sector, the smallness of V-ub and V-cb can be consequences of this approximate 2-3 symmetry. The same approximate symmetry can simultaneously lead to a large atmospheric mixing angle and can describe the leptonic mixing quite well. We identify two generic scenarios leading to this. One is based on the conventional type-I seesaw mechanism and the other follows from the type-II seesaw model. The latter requires a quasi-degenerate neutrino spectrum for obtaining large atmospheric neutrino mixing in the presence of an approximate mu-tau symmetry.