44 research outputs found
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
Low Scale Flavor Gauge Symmetries
We study the possibility of gauging the Standard Model flavor group. Anomaly
cancellation leads to the addition of fermions whose mass is inversely
proportional to the known fermion masses. In this case all flavor violating
effects turn out to be controlled roughly by the Standard Model Yukawa,
suppressing transitions for the light generations. Due to the inverted
hierarchy the scale of new gauge flavor bosons could be as low as the
electroweak scale without violating any existing bound but accessible at the
Tevatron and the LHC. The mechanism of flavor protection potentially provides
an alternative to Minimal Flavor Violation, with flavor violating effects
suppressed by hierarchy of scales rather than couplings.Comment: 24 pages + appendices; v2) Refs. added and numerical examples
improved. Results unchanged; v3) small typos in appendix B correcte
Unifying CP violations of quark and lepton sectors
A preliminary determination of the Dirac phase in the PMNS matrix is
\dell\approx -\frac{\pi}{2}. A rather accurately determined Jarlskog
invariant in the CKM matrix is close to the maximum. Since the phases in
the CKM and PMNS matrices will be accurately determined in the future, it is an
interesting problem to relate these two phases. This can be achieved in a
families-unified grand unification if the weak CP violation is introduced
spontaneously {\it \`a la} Froggatt and Nielsen at a high energy scale, where
only one meaningful Dirac CP phase appears.Comment: 10 pages with 3 figure
The Impact of Flavour Changing Neutral Gauge Bosons on B->X_s gamma
The branching ratio of the rare decay B->X_s gamma provides potentially
strong constraints on models beyond the Standard Model. Considering a general
scenario with new heavy neutral gauge bosons, present in particular in Z' and
gauge flavour models, we point out two new contributions to the B->X_s gamma
decay. The first one originates from one-loop diagrams mediated by gauge bosons
and heavy exotic quarks with electric charge -1/3. The second contribution
stems from the QCD mixing of neutral current-current operators generated by
heavy neutral gauge bosons and the dipole operators responsible for the B->X_s
gamma decay. The latter mixing is calculated here for the first time. We
discuss general sum rules which have to be satisfied in any model of this type.
We emphasise that the neutral gauge bosons in question could also significantly
affect other fermion radiative decays as well as non-leptonic two-body B
decays, epsilon'/epsilon, anomalous (g-2)_mu and electric dipole moments.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figures; version published on JHEP; added magic QCD
numbers for flavour-violating Z gauge boson contribution to B -> X_s gamm
Constraining Non-Standard Interactions of the Neutrino with Borexino
We use the Borexino 153.6 ton.year data to place constraints on non-standard
neutrino-electron interactions, taking into account the uncertainty in the 7Be
solar neutrino flux, and backgrounds due to 85Kr and 210Bi beta-decay. We find
that the bounds are comparable to existing bounds from all other experiments.
Further improvement can be expected in Phase II of Borexino due to the
reduction in the 85Kr background.Comment: 21 pages, 16 pdf figures, 2 tables. Analysis updated including the
uncertainty in sin^2\theta_{23}. Accepted in JHE
Goldstone Bosons in Effective Theories with Spontaneously Broken Flavour Symmetry
The Flavour Symmetry of the Standard Model (SM) gauge sector is broken by the
fermion Yukawa couplings. Promoting the Yukawa matrices to scalar spurion
fields, one can break the flavour symmetry spontaneously by giving appropriate
vacuum expectation values (VEVs) to the spurion fields, and one encounters
Goldstone modes for every broken flavour symmetry generator. In this paper, we
point out various aspects related to the possible dynamical interpretation of
the Goldstone bosons: (i) In an effective-theory framework with local flavour
symmetry, the Goldstone fields represent the longitudinal modes for massive
gauge bosons. The spectrum of the latter follows the sequence of
flavour-symmetry breaking related to the hierarchies in Yukawa couplings and
flavour mixing angles. (ii) Gauge anomalies can be consistently treated by
adding higher-dimensional operators. (iii) Leaving the U(1) factors of the
flavour symmetry group as global symmetries, the respective Goldstone modes
behave as axions which can be used to resolve the strong CP problem by a
modified Peccei-Quinn mechanism. (iv) The dynamical picture of flavour symmetry
breaking implies new sources of flavour-changing neutral currents, which arise
from integrating out heavy scalar spurion fields and heavy gauge bosons. The
coefficients of the effective operators follow the minimal-flavour violation
principle.Comment: 27 pages, abstract and introduction extended, more detailed
discussion of heavy gauge boson spectrum and auxiliary heavy fermions,
outline restructured. Matches version to be published in JHE
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
R-parity violation in SU(5)
We show that judiciously chosen R-parity violating terms in the minimal
renormalizable supersymmetric SU(5) are able to correct all the
phenomenologically wrong mass relations between down quarks and charged
leptons. The model can accommodate neutrino masses as well. One of the most
striking consequences is a large mixing between the electron and the Higgsino.
We show that this can still be in accord with data in some regions of the
parameter space and possibly falsified in future experiments.Comment: 30 pages, 1 figure. Revised version. To appear in JHE
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