2003/06/30 by F. Bazzocchi, Stefano Bertolini, S. Bertolini +3
Physics and Astronomy · #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Neutrino Physics Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.68.096007
published as Phys.Rev. D68 (2003) 096007 · 13 pages, revTeX4. Version to be published in PRD
arxiv created 2003/09/16 · openalex publication_date 2003/11/26 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Fermion masses and mixing matrices can be described in terms of spontaneously broken (global or gauge) flavor symmetries. We propose a little-Higgs-boson inspired scenario in which an SU(2)\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fiU(1) gauge flavor symmetry is spontaneously (and completely) broken by the vacuum of the dynamically induced potential for two scalar doublets (the flavons), which are pseudo Goldstone bosons remaining after the spontaneous breaking---at a scale between 10 and 100 TeV---of an approximate SU(6) global symmetry. The vacuum expectation values of the flavons give rise to the texture in the fermion mass matrices. We discuss in detail the case of leptons. Light-neutrino masses arise by means of a seesawlike mechanism that takes place at the same scale at which the SU(6) global symmetry is broken. We show that without any fine-tuning of the parameters the experimental values of the charged-lepton masses, the neutrino squared mass differences, and the Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata mixing matrix are reproduced.