FLAVOR SYMMETRIES IN EXTRA DIMENSIONS

Abstract

We present a class of models of flavor that rely on the use of flavor symmetries and the Froggart–Nielsen mechanism in extra dimensions. The particle content is that of the standard model plus an additional flavon field; all the fields propagate in universal extra dimensions and the flavor scale is associated with the cutoff of the theory, which in 5D is ~ 10 TeV. The Yukawa matrices are generated by higher dimension operators involving flavon fields, whose vacuum expectation values break the flavor symmetry. We apply this framework and present a specific 5D model based on a discrete local symmetry that reproduces all fermion masses and mixing angles both in the quark and charged lepton sectors.