A complete survey of texture zeros in general and symmetric quark mass matrices

Abstract We perform a systematic analysis of all possible texture zeros in general and symmetric quark mass matrices. Using the values of masses and mixing parameters at the electroweak scale, we identify for both cases the maximally restrictive viable textures. Furthermore, we investigate the predictive power of these textures by applying a numerical predictivity measure recently defined by us. With this measure we find no predictive textures among the viable general quark mass matrices, while in the case of symmetric quark mass matrices most of the 15 maximally restrictive textures are predictive with respect to one or more light quark masses.