Outpatient Civil Commitment in North Carolina: Constitutional and Policy Concerns

Outpatient commitment of the mentally ill is court-ordered treatment in the community and is usually characterized by short, recurring visits to a mental health clinic that provides treatment such as medication, individual or group therapy, day or part-day activities or supervision of living arrangements. The history and design of the North Carolina preventive commitment scheme and constitutional difficulties with this statute are discussed

A to Z of Flavour with Pati-Salam

We propose an elegant theory of flavour based on $A_4\times Z_5$ family symmetry with Pati-Salam unification which provides an excellent description of quark and lepton masses, mixing and CP violation. The $A_4$ symmetry unifies the left-handed families and its vacuum alignment determines the columns of Yukawa matrices. The $Z_5$ symmetry distinguishes the right-handed families and its breaking controls CP violation in both the quark and lepton sectors. The Pati-Salam symmetry relates the quark and lepton Yukawa matrices, with $Y^u=Y^{\nu}$ and $Y^d\sim Y^e$. Using the see-saw mechanism with very hierarchical right-handed neutrinos and CSD4 vacuum alignment, the model predicts the entire PMNS mixing matrix and gives a Cabibbo angle $\theta_C\approx 1/4$. In particular it predicts maximal atmospheric mixing, $\theta^l_{23}=45^\circ\pm 0.5^\circ$ and leptonic CP violating phase $\delta^l=260^\circ \pm 5^\circ$. The reactor angle prediction is $\theta^l_{13}=9^\circ\pm 0.5^\circ$, while the solar angle is $34^\circ \geq \theta^l_{12}\geq 31^\circ$, for a lightest neutrino mass in the range $0 \leq m_1 \leq 0.5$ meV, corresponding to a normal neutrino mass hierarchy and a very small rate for neutrinoless double beta decay.Comment: 38 pages, 28 figures, published versio

Atmospheric and Solar Neutrinos with a Heavy Singlet

We follow a minimalistic approach to neutrino masses, by introducing a single heavy singlet $N$ into the standard model (or supersymmetric standard model) with a heavy Majorana mass $M$, which couples as a single right-handed neutrino in a Dirac fashion to leptons, and induces a single light see-saw mass $m_{\nu}\sim 5\times 10^{-2} eV$, leaving two neutrinos massless. This trivial extension to the standard model may account for the atomospheric neutrino data via $\nu_{\mu}\to \nu_{\tau}$ oscillations with near maximal mixing angle $\theta_{23}\sim \pi/4$ and $\Delta m_{\mu \tau}^2 \sim 2.5\times 10^{-3} eV^2$. In order to account for the solar neutrino data the model is extended to SUSY GUT/ string-inspired type models which can naturally yield an additional light tau neutrino mass $m_{\nu_{\tau}}\sim few \times 10^{-3} eV$ leading to $\nu_{e L}\to (\cos \theta_{23}{\nu}_{\mu L} -\sin \theta_{23}{\nu}_{\tau L})$ oscillations with $\Delta m_{e1}^2\sim 10^{-5} eV^2$ and a mixing angle $\sin^2 2 \theta_1 \approx 10^{-2}$ in the correct range for the small angle MSW solution to the solar neutrino problem. The model predicts $\nu_{e L}\to (\sin \theta_{23}{\nu}_{\mu L} +\cos \theta_{23}{\nu}_{\tau L})$ oscillations with a similar angle but a larger splitting $\Delta m_{e2}^2 \sim 2.5\times 10^{-3} eV^2$.Comment: 10 pages, Latex. Expanded discussion of mixing angles mainly in an Appendi

RK(∗)R_{K^{(*)}} and the origin of Yukawa couplings

We explore the possibility that the semi-leptonic $B$ decay ratios $R_{K^{(*)}}$ which violate $\mu - e$ universality are related to the origin of the fermion Yukawa couplings in the Standard Model. Some time ago, a vector-like fourth family (without a $Z'$) was used to generate fermion mass hierarchies and mixing patterns without introducing any family symmetry. Recently the idea of inducing flavourful $Z'$ couplings via mixing with a vector-like fourth family which carries gauged $U(1)'$ charges has been proposed as a simple way of producing controlled flavour universality violation while elegantly cancelling anomalies. We show that the fusion of these two ideas provides a nice connection between $R_{K^{(*)}}$ and the origin of Yukawa couplings in the quark sector. However the lepton sector requires some tuning of Yukawa couplings to obtain the desired coupling of $Z'$ to muons.Comment: Minor corrections to phenomenology section to match published version. 19 pages, 4 figure

Flavour from the Planck scale to the electroweak scale

We discuss a theory of flavour in which Higgs Yukawa couplings are related to those of the new scalar triplet leptoquark and/or $Z'$ responsible for $R_{K^{(*)}}$, with all couplings arising effectively from mixing with a vector-like fourth family, whose mass may be anywhere from the Planck scale to the electroweak scale for the leptoquarks explanation, but is pinned down to the TeV scale if the $Z'$ exchange plays a role. However, in this particular model, only leptoquark exchange can contribute significantly to $R_{K^{(*)}}$, since $Z'$ exchange is too constrained from $B_s$ mixing and $\tau \rightarrow 3 \mu$, although other Higgs Yukawa matrix structures may allow it.Comment: 6 pages, 11 figures. Contribution to the 2019 EW session of the 54th Rencontres de Morion