Flipped Quartification: Product Group Unification with Leptoquarks

Abstract

The quartification model is an SU(3)4 extension with a bi-fundamental fermion sector of the well-known SU(3)3 bi-fundamentalfication model. An alternative “flipped” version of the quartification model is obtained by rearrangement of the particle assignments. The flipped model has two standard (bi-fundamentalfication) families and one flipped quartification family. In contrast to traditional product group unification models, flipped quartification stands out by featuring leptoquarks and thus allows for new mechanisms to explain the generation of neutrino masses and possible hints of lepton-flavor non-universality.