Year: 2003
Type: article
Abstract: Fermion masses and mixing matrices can be described in terms of spontaneously broken (global or gauge) flavor symmetries. We propose a little-Higgs-boson inspired scenario in which an $\mathrm{SU}(2)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}U(1)$ gauge flavor symmetry is spontaneously (and completely) broken by the vacuum of the dynamically induced potential for two scalar doublets (the flavons), which are pseudo Goldstone bosons remaining after the spontaneous breaking---at a scale between 10 and 100 TeV---of an approximate $\mathrm{SU}(6)$ global symmetry. The vacuum expectation values of the flavons give rise to the texture in the fermion mass matrices. We discuss in detail the case of leptons. Light-neutrino masses arise by means of a seesawlike mechanism that takes place at the same scale at which the $\mathrm{SU}(6)$ global symmetry is broken. We show that without any fine-tuning of the parameters the experimental values of the charged-lepton masses, the neutrino squared mass differences, and the Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata mixing matrix are reproduced.
Authors: F. Bazzocchi, S. Bertolini, M. Fabbrichesi, M. Piai
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2160234342