Fermions in the vortex background on a sphere

In 5+1 dimensions, we construct a vortex-like solution on a two-dimensional sphere. We study fermionic zero modes in the background of this solution and relate them to the replication of fermion families in the Standard Model. In particular, using a compactified space removes the need for the difficult localisation of gauge fields, while the present procedure (rather than naive compactification on a disk) also removes spurious fermionic modes.Comment: 13 pages, 1 eps figure, JHEP3 style required, references adde

Searching for family-number conserving neutral gauge bosons from extra dimensions

Previous studies have shown how the three generations of the Standard Model fermions can arise from a single generation in more than four dimensions, and how off-diagonal neutral couplings arise for gauge-boson Kaluza-Klein recurrences. These couplings conserve family number in the leading approximation. While an existing example, built on a spherical geometry, suggests a high compactification scale, we conjecture that the overall structure is generic, and work out possible signatures at colliders, compatible with rare decays data.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, jetpl.cls style, references adde