EYM equations in the presence of q-stars

We study Einstein-Yang-Mills equations in the presence of gravitating non-topological soliton field configurations, of q-ball type. We produce numerical solutions, stable with respect to gravitational collapse and to fission into free particles, and we study the effect of the field strength and the eigen-frequency to the soliton parameters. We also investigate the formation of such soliton stars when the spacetime is asymptotically anti de Sitter.Comment: 11 pages, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Q-stars in extra dimensions

We study q-stars with global and local U(1) symmetry in extra dimensions in asymptotically anti de Sitter or flat spacetime. The behavior of the mass, radius and particle number of the star is quite different in 3 dimensions, but in 5, 6, 8 and 11 dimensions is similar to the behavior in 4.Comment: 18 pages, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Gauge Unification and Quark Masses in a Pati-Salam Model from Branes

We investigate the phase space of parameters in the Pati-Salam model derived in the context of D-branes scenarios, requiring low energy string scale. We find that a non-supersymmetric version complies with a string scale as low as 10 TeV, while in the supersymmetric version the string scale raises up to ~2 x 10^7 TeV. The limited energy region for RGE running demands a large tan(beta) in order to have experimentally acceptable masses for the top and bottom quarks.Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX, 7 figures include

Q-stars and charged q-stars

We present the formalism of q-stars with local or global U(1) symmetry. The equations we formulate are solved numerically and provide the main features of the soliton star. We study its behavior when the symmetry is local in contrast to the global case. A general result is that the soliton remains stable and does not decay into free particles and the electrostatic repulsion preserves it from gravitational collapse. We also investigate the case of a q-star with non-minimal energy-momentum tensor and find that the soliton is stable even in some cases of collapse when the coupling to gravity is absent.Comment: Latex, 19pg, 12 figures. Accepted in Phys. Rev.

The Interplay Between GUT and Flavour Symmetries in a Pati-Salam x S4 Model

Both Grand Unified symmetries and discrete flavour symmetries are appealing ways to describe apparent structures in the gauge and flavour sectors of the Standard Model. Both symmetries put constraints on the high energy behaviour of the theory. This can give rise to unexpected interplay when building models that possess both symmetries. We investigate on the possibility to combine a Pati-Salam model with the discrete flavour symmetry $S_4$ that gives rise to quark-lepton complementarity. Under appropriate assumptions at the GUT scale, the model reproduces fermion masses and mixings both in the quark and in the lepton sectors. We show that in particular the Higgs sector and the running Yukawa couplings are strongly affected by the combined constraints of the Grand Unified and family symmetries. This in turn reduces the phenomenologically viable parameter space, with high energy mass scales confined to a small region and some parameters in the neutrino sector slightly unnatural. In the allowed regions, we can reproduce the quark masses and the CKM matrix. In the lepton sector, we reproduce the charged lepton masses, including bottom-tau unification and the Georgi-Jarlskog relation as well as the two known angles of the PMNS matrix. The neutrino mass spectrum can present a normal or an inverse hierarchy, and only allowing the neutrino parameters to spread into a range of values between $\lambda^{-2}$ and $\lambda^2$, with $\lambda\simeq0.2$. Finally, our model suggests that the reactor mixing angle is close to its current experimental bound.Comment: 62 pages, 4 figures; references added, version accepted for publication in JHE