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Neutrino oscillation constraints on neutrinoless double beta decay

We have studied the constraints imposed by the results of neutrino oscillation experiments on the effective Majorana mass |<m>| that characterizes the contribution of Majorana neutrino masses to the matrix element of neutrinoless double-beta decay. We have shown that in a general scheme with three Majorana neutrinos and a hierarchy of neutrino masses (which can be explained by the see-saw mechanism), the results of neutrino oscillation experiments imply rather strong constraints on the parameter |<m>|. From the results of the first reactor long-baseline experiment CHOOZ and the Bugey experiment it follows that |<m>| < 3x10^{-2} eV if the largest mass-squared difference is smaller than 2 eV^2. Hence, we conclude that the observation of neutrinoless double-beta decay with a probability that corresponds to |<m>| > 10^{-1} eV would be a signal for a non-hierarchical neutrino mass spectrum and/or non-standard mechanisms of lepton number violation.