A New Approach to Flavor Symmetry and an Extended Naturalness Principle

A class of non-supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model is proposed in which there is a multiplicity of light scalar doublets in a multiplet of a non-abelian family group with the Standard Model Higgs doublet. Anthropic tuning makes the latter light, and consequently the other scalar doublets remain light because of the family symmetry. The family symmetry greatly constrains the pattern of FCNC and proton decay operators coming from scalar-exchange. Such models show that useful constraints on model-building can come from an extended naturalness principle when the electroweak scale is anthropically tuned.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figure

Nucleon-Nucleon Bremsstrahlung emission of massive Axion

We consider the problem of axion production by bremsstrahlung emission in a nuclear medium. The usual assumption of a massless axion is replaced by more general hypotheses, so that we can describe the emission process for axions with mass up to a few MeV. We point out that in certain physical situations the contribution from non-zero mass is non-negligible. In particular, in the mechanism for the production of Gamma Ray Bursts via emission of heavy axions the axion mass m_a ~ 1MeV is comparable with the temperature of the nuclear medium and thus can not be disregarded. Looking at our results we find, in fact, a fairly considerable reduction of the axion luminosity in that mechanism.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

SU(3) Family Gauge Symmetry and the Axion

We analyze the structure of a recently proposed effective field theory (EFT) for the generation of quark and lepton mass ratios and mixing angles, based on the spontaneous breaking of an SU(3) family gauge symmetry at a high scale F. We classify the Yukawa operators necessary to seed the masses, making use of the continuous global symmetries that they preserve. One global U(1), in addition to baryon number and electroweak hypercharge, remains unbroken after the inclusion of all operators required by standard-model-fermion phenomenology. An associated vacuum symmetry insures the vanishing of the first-family quark and charged-lepton masses in the absence of the family gauge interaction. If this U(1) symmetry is taken to be exact in the EFT, broken explicitly by only the QCD-induced anomaly, and if the breaking scale F is taken to lie in the range 10 to 9 - 10 to 12 GeV, then the associated Nambu-Goldstone boson is a potential QCD axion.Comment: References added and clarifications in Vacuum Structure sectio

A Light Supersymmetric Axion in an Anomalous Abelian Extension of the Standard Model

We present a supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (USSM-A) with an anomalous U(1) and Stueckelberg axions for anomaly cancellation, generalizing similar non-supersymmetric constructions. The model, built by a bottom-up approach, is expected to capture the low-energy supersymmetric description of axionic symmetries in theories with gauged anomalous abelian interactions, previously explored in the non-supersymmetric case for scenarios with intersecting branes. The choice of a USSM-like superpotential, with one extra singlet superfield and an extra abelian symmetry, allows a physical axion-like particle in the spectrum. We describe some general features of this construction and in particular the modification of the dark-matter sector which involves both the axion and several neutralinos with an axino component. The axion is expected to be very light in the absence of phases in the superpotential but could acquire a mass which can also be in the few GeV range or larger. In particular, the gauging of the anomalous symmetry allows independent mass/coupling interaction to the gauge fields of this particle, a feature which is absent in traditional (invisible) axion models. We comment on the general implications of our study for the signature of moduli from string theory due to the presence of these anomalous symmetries.Comment: 46 pages, 28 figures. Revised version, accepted for a publication on Phys.Rev.

The Super-little Higgs

Supersymmetry combined with little-Higgs can render the Higgs vev super-little, providing models of electroweak symmetry breaking free from fine-tunings. We discuss the difficulties that arise in implementing this idea and propose one simple successful model. Thanks to appropriately chosen Higgs representations, D-terms give no tree-level mass term to the Goldstone. The fermion representations are anomaly free, generation independent and embeddable into an SU(6) GUT. A simple mechanism provides the large top quark mass.Comment: Additional mechanism to get a quartic coupling discussed. References adde

Neutrinos and SU(3) Family Gauge Symmetry

We include the standard-model (SM) leptons in a recently proposed framework for the generation of quark mass ratios and Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) mixing angles from an SU(3) family gauge interaction. The set of SM-singlet scalar fields describing the spontaneous breaking is the same as employed for the quark sector. The imposition at tree-level of the experimentally correct Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata (PMNS) mixing matrix, in the form of a tri-bi maximal structure, fixes several of the otherwise free parameters and renders the model predictive. The normal hierarchy among the neutrino masses emerges from this scheme.Comment: 9 pages, 3 tables; a comment added to clarify the effects of additional Yukawa operators; final version in PR

Twin SUSY

We construct an extension of the MSSM in which superpartners can naturally be heavier than the electroweak scale. This ``little hierarchy'' of scales is stable because the Higgs arises as a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson in the breaking of an accidental SU(4) symmetry of the Higgs sector. Supersymmetry and the global symmetry combine to forbid logarithmically divergent one-loop contributions to the Higgs mass. The accidental symmetry follows from a simple ``twin'' parity which exchanges the SU(2) sectors in the SU(3)_C x SU(2)_L x SU(2)_R x U(1)_X gauge group.Comment: 10 pages; v2: references and Lawrence adde

Cosmology with mirror dark matter I: linear evolution of perturbations

This is the first paper of a series devoted to the study of the cosmological implications of the parallel mirror world with the same microphysics as the ordinary one, but having smaller temperature, with a limit set by the BBN constraints. The difference in temperature of the ordinary and mirror sectors generates shifts in the key epochs for structure formation, which proceeds in the mirror sector under different conditions. We consider adiabatic scalar primordial perturbations as an input and analyze the trends of all the relevant scales for structure formation (Jeans length and mass, Silk scale, horizon scale) for both ordinary and mirror sectors, comparing them with the CDM case. These scales are functions of the fundamental parameters of the theory (the temperature of the mirror plasma and the amount of mirror baryonic matter), and in particular they are influenced by the difference between the cosmological key epochs in the two sectors. Then we used a numerical code to compute the evolution in linear regime of density perturbations for all the components of a Mirror Universe: ordinary baryons and photons, mirror baryons and photons, and possibly cold dark matter. We analyzed the evolution of the perturbations for different values of mirror temperature and baryonic density, and obtained that for x=T'/T less than a typical value x_eq, for which the mirror baryon-photon decoupling happens before the matter-radiation equality, mirror baryons are equivalent to the CDM for the linear structure formation process. Indeed, the smaller the value of x, the closer mirror dark matter resembles standard cold dark matter during the linear regime.Comment: 33 pages, 24 figures; minor corrections in introduction, conclusions and references; accepted for publication in IJMP