Neutrino Mass as an Intrinsic Quantum Number

We propose that neutrino mass is an intrinsic quantum number — carried by the particle rather than acquired through coupling to the Higgs field — and that this intrinsic character is forced by the exact vanishing of the Higgs–neutrino Yukawa coupling in the Standard Model due to the absence of right-handed neutrinos. Starting from the constraint that the mass operator M̂_int and the flavor operator F̂ must be non-commuting, we prove that both operators must act on the same Hilbert space, ruling out tensor-product decompositions common in the literature. The minimal Lie group consistent with this requirement on a three-dimensional complex space is SU(3)_gen, an internal generation symmetry whose fundamental representation simultaneously accommodates flavor and mass as Cartan generators in different bases. The mass operator is identified with a linear combination of the two SU(3)_gen Cartan generators H₁, H₂. SU(3) tracelessness forces a mixed-sign eigenvalue spectrum, yielding the prediction m₁ = 0 exactly and a mass ratio m₂/m₃ = 3 − 2√2 ≈ 0.1716, in agreement with oscillation data at the 0.6% level without any free parameters. The same tracelessness, combined with the PMNS flavor weights, predicts a negative effective mass squared for the electron neutrino, m²_eff(νe) ≈ −2.76 × 10⁻⁴ eV², consistent in sign with the persistent negative central values reported by KATRIN across multiple campaigns. The total mass Σᵢ mᵢ = 58.8 meV is consistent with DESI 2024 bounds. These results follow from representation theory and the observed PMNS matrix with no additional free parameters beyond a single overall mass scale fixed by oscillation data