225 research outputs found
Trimaximal neutrino mixing from vacuum alignment in A4 and S4 models
Recent T2K results indicate a sizeable reactor angle theta_13 which would
rule out exact tri-bimaximal lepton mixing. We study the vacuum alignment of
the Altarelli-Feruglio A4 family symmetry model including additional flavons in
the 1' and 1" representations and show that it leads to trimaximal mixing in
which the second column of the lepton mixing matrix consists of the column
vector (1,1,1)^T/sqrt{3}, with a potentially large reactor angle. In order to
limit the reactor angle and control the higher order corrections, we propose a
renormalisable S4 model in which the 1' and 1" flavons of A4 are unified into a
doublet of S4 which is spontaneously broken to A4 by a flavon which enters the
neutrino sector at higher order. We study the vacuum alignment in the S4 model
and show that it predicts accurate trimaximal mixing with approximate
tri-bimaximal mixing, leading to a new mixing sum rule testable in future
neutrino experiments. Both A4 and S4 models preserve form dominance and hence
predict zero leptogenesis, up to renormalisation group corrections.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures, version to be published in JHE
Ultraviolet Completion of Flavour Models
Effective Flavour Models do not address questions related to the nature of
the fundamental renormalisable theory at high energies. We study the
ultraviolet completion of Flavour Models, which in general has the advantage of
improving the predictivity of the effective models. In order to illustrate the
important features we provide minimal completions for two known A4 models. We
discuss the phenomenological implications of the explicit completions, such as
lepton flavour violating contributions that arise through the exchange of
messenger fields.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figure
Bridging flavour violation and leptogenesis in SU(3) family models
We reconsider basic, in the sense of minimal field content, Pati-Salam x
SU(3) family models which make use of the Type I see-saw mechanism to reproduce
the observed mixing and mass spectrum in the neutrino sector. The goal of this
is to achieve the observed baryon asymmetry through the thermal decay of the
lightest right-handed neutrino and at the same time to be consistent with the
expected experimental lepton flavour violation sensitivity. This kind of models
have been previously considered but it was not possible to achieve a
compatibility among all of the ingredients mentioned above. We describe then
how different SU(3) messengers, the heavy fields that decouple and produce the
right form of the Yukawa couplings together with the scalars breaking the SU(3)
symmetry, can lead to different Yukawa couplings. This in turn implies
different consequences for flavour violation couplings and conditions for
realizing the right amount of baryon asymmetry through the decay of the
lightest right-handed neutrino. Also a highlight of the present work is a new
fit of the Yukawa textures traditionally embedded in SU(3) family models.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures, Some typos correcte
Beyond MFV in family symmetry theories of fermion masses
Minimal Flavour Violation (MFV) postulates that the only source of flavour
changing neutral currents and CP violation, as in the Standard Model, is the
CKM matrix. However it does not address the origin of fermion masses and mixing
and models that do usually have a structure that goes well beyond the MFV
framework. In this paper we compare the MFV predictions with those obtained in
models based on spontaneously broken (horizontal) family symmetries, both
Abelian and non-Abelian. The generic suppression of flavour changing processes
in these models turns out to be weaker than in the MFV hypothesis. Despite
this, in the supersymmetric case, the suppression may still be consistent with
a solution to the hierarchy problem, with masses of superpartners below 1 TeV.
A comparison of FCNC and CP violation in processes involving a variety of
different family quantum numbers should be able to distinguish between various
family symmetry models and models satisfying the MFV hypothesis.Comment: 34 pages, no figure
Generalised CP and Family Symmetry in Semi-Direct Models of Leptons
We perform a detailed analysis of family symmetry combined
with a generalised CP symmetry in the lepton sector, breaking to different
remnant symmetries in the neutrino and in the charged lepton
sector, together with different remnant CP symmetries in each sector. We
discuss the resulting mass and mixing predictions for with
and with . All cases correspond to
the preserved symmetry smaller than the full Klein symmetry, as in the
semi-direct approach, leading to predictions which depend on a single
undetermined real parameter, which mainly determines the reactor angle. We
focus on five phenomenologically allowed cases for which we present the
resulting predictions for the PMNS parameters as a function of , as well as
the predictions for neutrinoless double beta decay.Comment: 65 pages, 19 figures, and the predictions for neutrinoless double
beta decay are update
Decaying Dark Matter in the Supersymmetric Standard Model with Freeze-in and Seesaw mechanims
Inspired by the decaying dark matter (DM) which can explain cosmic ray
anomalies naturally, we consider the supersymmetric Standard Model with three
right-handed neutrinos (RHNs) and R-parity, and introduce a TeV-scale DM sector
with two fields \phi_{1,2} and a discrete symmetry. The DM sector only
interacts with the RHNs via a very heavy field exchange and then we can explain
the cosmic ray anomalies. With the second right-handed neutrino N_2 dominant
seesaw mechanism at the low scale around 10^4 GeV, we show that \phi_{1,2} can
obtain the vacuum expectation values around the TeV scale, and then the
lightest state from \phi_{1,2} is the decay DM with lifetime around \sim
10^{26}s. In particular, the DM very long lifetime is related to the tiny
neutrino masses, and the dominant DM decay channels to \mu and \tau are related
to the approximate \mu-\tau symmetry. Furthermore, the correct DM relic density
can be obtained via the freeze-in mechanism, the small-scale problem for power
spectrum can be solved due to the decays of the R-parity odd meta-stable states
in the DM sector, and the baryon asymmetry can be generated via the soft
leptogensis.Comment: 24 pages,3 figure
Discrete family symmetry, Higgs mediators and theta_{13}
We present a new (supersymmetric) framework for obtaining an excellent
description of quark, charged lepton and neutrino masses and mixings from a
Delta(6n^2) family symmetry with multiplet assignments consistent with an
underlying SO(10) Grand Unification. It employs a Higgs mediator sector in
place of the usual Froggatt-Nielsen messengers, with quark and lepton
messengers, and provides significant improvements over existing models of this
type having unsuppressed Yukawa couplings to the third generation and a
simplified vacuum alignment mechanism. The neutrino mass differences are
naturally less hierarchical than those of the quarks and charged leptons.
Similarly the lepton mixing angles are much larger than those in the quark
sector and have an approximate tri-bi-maximal (TB) mixing form for theta_{12}
and theta_{23}. However the mixing angle theta_{13} is naturally much larger
than in pure TB mixing and can be consistent with the value found in recent
experiments. The magnitude of theta_{13} is correlated with a the predicted
deviation of theta_{23} from bi-maximal mixing. The model has light familon
fields that can significantly modify the associated SUSY phenomenology.Comment: v3: accepted in JHE
Exotic particles below the TeV from low scale flavour theories
A flavour gauge theory is observable only if the symmetry is broken at
relatively low energies. The intrinsic parity-violation of the fermion
representations in a flavour theory describing quark, lepton and higgsino
masses and mixings generically requires anomaly cancellation by new fermions.
Benchmark supersymmetric flavour models are built and studied to argue that: i)
the flavour symmetry breaking should be about three orders of magnitude above
the higgsino mass, enough also to efficiently suppress FCNC and CP violations
coming from higher-dimensional operators; ii) new fermions with exotic decays
into lighter particles are typically required at scales of the order of the
higgsino mass.Comment: 19 pages, references added, one comment and one footnote added,
results unchange
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 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 and , with .
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
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