New U(1) Gauge Symmetry of Quarks and Leptons

Instead of anchoring the seesaw mechanism with the conventional heavy right-handed neutrino singlet, a small Majorana neutrino mass may be obtained just as well with the addition of a heavy triplet of leptons per family to the minimal standard model of particle interactions. The resulting model is shown to have the remarkable property of accommodating a new U(1) symmetry which is anomaly-free and may thus be gauged. There are many possible phenomenological consequences of this proposal which may be already relevant in explaining one or two recent potential experimental discrepancies.