Dynamical generation of quark/lepton mass hierarchy in an extra dimension

Abstract

Abstract We show that the observed quark/lepton mass hierarchy can be realized dynamically on an interval extra dimension with point interactions. In our model, the positions of the point interactions play a crucial role in controlling the quark/lepton mass hierarchy and are determined by the minimization of the Casimir energy. By use of the exact extra-dimensional coordinate-dependent vacuum expectation value of a gauge-singlet scalar, we find that there is a parameter set, where the positions of the point interactions are stabilized and fixed, which can reproduce the experimental values of the quark masses precisely enough, while the charged lepton part is less relevant. We also show that possible mixings among the charged leptons will improve the situation significantly.