Heavy-meson physics and flavour violation with a single generation

We study flavour-violating processes which involve heavy B- and D-mesons and are mediated by Kaluza-Klein modes of gauge bosons in a previously suggested model where three generations of the Standard Model fermions originate from a single generation in six dimensions. We find the bound on the size R of the extra spatial dimensions 1/R>3.3 TeV, which arises from the three-body decay B_s to K mu e. Due to the still too low statistics this bound is much less stringent than the constraint arising from K to mu e, 1/R>64 TeV, which was found in a previous work (Frere et al., JHEP, 2003). Nevertheless, we argue that a clear signature of the model would be an observation of K to mu e and B_s to K mu e decays without observations of other flavour and lepton number changing processes at the same precision level.Comment: 15 page

Neutrino masses with a single generation in the bulk

In a class of multidimensional models, topology of the thick brane provides three chiral fermionic families with hierarchical masses and mixings in the effective four-dimensional theory, while the full model contains a single vector-like generation. We discuss how to incorporate three non-degenerate neutrino masses in these models with the help of only one singlet bulk fermion.Comment: 16 pages, 1 EPS figur

Towards Z_2-protected gauge--Higgs unification

In theories with flux compactification in eight or higher dimensions, the extra-dimensional components of the gauge field may be regarded as the Higgs field candidates. We suggest a way to protect these components from getting large tree-level masses by imposing a $Z_2$-symmetry acting on compact manifolds and background fields on them. In our scheme the infinite series of heavy KK modes naturally decouples from the light Higgs candidates, whose number is generically larger than one. We also present toy models with three families of leptons, illustrating that the Yukawa sector in our scheme is fairly strongly constrained. In one of these models, one fermion gets a tree-level mass after electroweak symmetry breaking, while two others remain naturally massless at the tree level.Comment: A few points clarified. Journal versio

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

Fermionic zero modes in gauge and gravity backgrounds On T2T^2

In this note we study fermionic zero modes in gauge and gravity backgrounds taking a two dimensional compact manifold $T^2$ as extra dimensions. The result is that there exist massless Dirac fermions which have normalizable zero modes under quite general assumptions about these backgrounds on the bulk. Several special cases of gauge background on the torus are discussed and some simple fermionic zero modes are obtained.Comment: 8 pages, no figures, v2: more references, accepted by Mod.Phys.Lett.

See-saw neutrino masses and large mixing angles in the vortex background on a sphere

In the vortex background on a sphere, a single 6-dimensional fermion family gives rise to 3 zero-modes in the 4-dimensional point of view, which may explain the replication of families in the Standard Model. Previously, it had been shown that realistic hierarchical mass and mixing patterns can be reproduced for the quarks and the charged leptons. Here, we show that the addition of a single heavy 6-dimensional field that is gauge singlet, unbound to the vortex, and embedded with a bulk Majorana mass enables to generate 4D Majorana masses for the light neutrinos through the see-saw mechanism. The scheme is very predictive. The hierarchical structure of the fermion zero-modes leads automatically to an inverted pseudo-Dirac mass pattern, and always predicts one maximal angle in the neutrino see-saw matrix. It is possible to obtain a second large mixing angle from either the charged lepton or the neutrino sector, and we demonstrate that this model can fit all observed data in neutrino oscillations experiments. Also, U_{e3} is found to be of the order ~0.1.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figur

Leptogenesis, neutrino masses and gauge unification

Leptogenesis is considered in its natural context where Majorana neutrinos fit in a gauge unification scheme and therefore couple to some extra gauge bosons. The masses of some of these gauge bosons are expected to be similar to those of the heavy Majorana particles, and this can have important consequences for leptogenesis. In fact, the effect can go both ways. Stricter bounds are obtained on one hand due to the dilution of the CP-violating effect by new decay and scattering channels, while, in a re-heating scheme, the presence of gauge couplings facilitates the re-population of the Majorana states. The latter effect allows in particular for smaller Dirac couplings.Comment: 11pages, 7 figures. v2: definition of the lepton asymmetry corrected, small numerical changes for the baryon number, conclusion does not change; typos corrected and references adde

Within- and among-colony variation in non-breeding dispersion of Magellanic penguins breeding along the coast of Argentina

Magellanic penguins Spheniscus magellanicus are upper trophic level predators and play a key role within their marine ecosystems. However, we lack detailed understanding of their non-breeding distribution where they might be impacted by human threats and climate change. Using geolocator tracking devices deployed in 2021, we analyzed individual non-breeding movements, and differences in the spatial, environmental, and trophic niches of Magellanic penguins breeding along the Atlantic coast of Argentina. The results show that movement characteristics, including trip lengths and dispersal distance, were similar among individuals and across colonies. However, the temporal pattern, including the timing of arrival to the breeding sites, differed between colonies. During the non-breeding season, distributions showed considerable overlap between colonies, notably between individuals from the central and the northernmost breeding sites. Individuals from the northern and central colonies faced similar oceanographic features (i.e. sea surface temperature, chlorophyll a, salinity, depth) and used similar foraging niches while within the anchovy geographic domain. In contrast, individuals breeding farther south were feeding within the geographically distinct sprat domain. Our results indicate that Magellanic penguins breeding along the latitudinal range of Argentina express a broad variation in habitat use during the non-breeding period, and make use of a large proportion of the Patagonian Shelf. The latitudinal location of the breeding colony seems to define the trophic niche and where individuals move during the non-breeding season.</jats:p

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