1996/06/19 by K. S. Babu, K.S. Babu, S.M. Barr +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Neutrino Physics Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/0370-2693(96)01002-7
published as Phys.Lett.B387:87-98,1996 · 21 pages in LaTeX, no figures
arxiv created 1996/06/19 · openalex publication_date 1996/10/01 · arxiv updated 2011/05/12 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
It is shown that a gauged SO(3) family symmetry can suppress flavor-changing processes from squark-mass non-degeneracy to an acceptable level. The potentially dangerous SO(3) D-terms can be rendered harmless if the CP-violating phases appearing in the SO(3)-breaking sector are small, which can naturally be the case if CP is a spontaneously broken symmetry. This approach has certain advantages over models based on global or non-abelian discrete symmetries, and dovetails with some recent proposals for explaining the pattern of quark and lepton masses. Moreover this approach relates the near-degeneracy of the squark masses to an approximate CP invariance which can also explain the smallness of the electron and neutron electric dipole moments.