We discuss a supersymmetric model with discrete flavor symmetry $A_4\times Z_3$. The additional scalar fields which contribute masses of leptons in the Yukawa terms are introduced in this model. We analyze their scalar potential and find that they have various vacuum structures. We show the relations among 24 different vacua and classify them into two types. We derive expressions of the lepton mixing angles, Dirac CP violating phase and Majorana phases for the two types. The model parameters which are allowed by the experimental data of the lepton mixing angles are different for each type. We also study the constraints on the model parameters which are related to Majorana phases. The different allowed regions of the model parameters for the two types are shown numerically for a given region of two combinations of the CP violating phases.
Discrete flavor symmetry is often introduced for explaining quark/lepton masses and mixings. However, its spontaneous breaking leads to the appearance of domain walls, which is problematic for cosmology. We consider a possibility that the discrete flavor symmetry is anomalous under the color SU(3) so that it splits the energy levels of degenerate discrete vacua as a solution to the domain wall problem. We find that in most known models of flavor symmetry, the QCD anomaly effect can only partially remove the degeneracy and there still remain degenerate vacua.
We determine the vacuum structure and phases of N=1 theories obtained via a mass μfor the adjoint chiral superfield in N=2, SO(n_c) SQCD. For large number of flavors these theories have two groups of vacua. The first exhibits dynamical breaking of flavor symmetry \USp(2n_f) \to U(n_f) and arises as a relevant deformation of a non-trivial superconformal theory. These are in the confined phase. The second group, in an IR-free phase with unbroken flavor symmetry, is produced from a Coulomb branch singularity with Seiberg's dual gauge symmetry. In the large-μregime both groups of vacua are well-de…
We examine a common origin of four-dimensional flavor, CP, and $U(1)_R$ symmetries in the context of heterotic string theory with standard embedding. We find that flavor and $U(1)_R$ symmetries are unified into the $Sp(2h+2, \mathbb{C})$ modular symmetries of Calabi-Yau threefolds with $h$ being the number of moduli fields. Together with the $\mathbb{Z}_2^{\rm CP}$ CP symmetry, they are enhanced to $GSp(2h+2, \mathbb{C})\simeq Sp(2h+2, \mathbb{C})\rtimes \mathbb{Z}_2^{\rm CP}$ generalized symplectic modular symmetry. We exemplify the $S_3, S_4, T^\prime, S_9$ non-Abelian flavor symmetries on e…
The quest for the Standard Model among the huge number of string vacua is usually based on a set of phenomenological criteria related to the massless spectrum of string models. In this work we study criteria associated with interactions in the effective low energy theory and in particular with the presence of the coupling that provides mass to the top quark. Working in the context of the Free Fermionic Formulation of the heterotic superstring, we demonstrate that, in a big class of phenomenologically promising $Z_2\times Z_2$ compactifications, these criteria can be expressed entirely in terms…
Genetic Algorithms are introduced as a search method for finding string vacua with viable phenomenological properties. It is shown, by testing them against a class of Free Fermionic models, that they are orders of magnitude more efficient than a randomised search. As an example, three generation, exophobic, Pati-Salam models with a top Yukawa occur once in every 10^{10} models, and yet a Genetic Algorithm can find them after constructing only 10^5 examples. Such non-deterministic search methods may be the only means to search for Standard Model string vacua with detailed phenomenological requi…
We report some recent progress towards classification of phenomenologically appealing heterotic string models in the Free Fermionic Formulation. We focus on a class of Z2xZ2 models with SO(10) space-time gauge symmetry and study their main phenomenological aspects. We further consider reducing the gauge symmetry to the Pati-Salam gauge group SU(4)XSU(2)_LxSU(2)_R and impose a series of phenomenological constraints including the existence of gauge symmetry breaking Higgs particles and the elimination of exotic fractionally charged states.
Recently it was proposed that ten-dimensional tachyonic string vacua may serve as starting points for the construction of viable four dimensional phenomenological string models which are tachyon free. This is achieved by projecting out the tachyons in the four-dimensional models using projectors other than the projector which is utilised in the supersymmetric models and those of the $SO(16)\times SO(16)$ heterotic string. We continue the exploration of this class of models by developing systematic computerised tools for their classification, the analysis of their tachyonic and massless spectra…
We study the question whether a possible metastable vacuum state is actually populated in a phase transition in the early universe, as is usually assumed in the discussion of vacuum stability bounds e.g. for Standard Model parameters. A phenomenological (3+1)-dimensional Langevin equation is solved numerically for a toy model with a potential motivated by the finite temperature 1-loop effective potential of the Standard Model including additional non-renormalizable operators from an effective theory for physics beyond the Standard Model and a time dependent temperature. It turns out that wheth…
We investigate supersymmetric models in which an anomalous $U(1)_{X}$ symmetry explains the Yukawa hierarchy, and the related $D_{X}$-term plays a role in supersymmetry breaking. We use a bottom-up approach to model building. Phenomenological viability leads to a scenario with degenerate squark and slepton spectra and with heavy gauginos. Features of a Kähler potential that allows for such a scenario are described.
The recent observations of atmospheric nu events from the Super-Kamiokande experiment are compatible with three-flavor neutrino oscillations, occurring dominantly in the nu_mu<--->nu_tau channel and subdominantly in the nu_mu<--->nu_e channel. We present an updated analysis of the three-flavor mass-mixing parameters consistent with the present phenomenology, including the latest 45 kTy data sample from Super-Kamiokande. A comparison with our previous results, based on 33 kTy data, shows that the oscillation evidence is strengthened, and that the neutrino mass-mixing parameters are constrained …
Dynamical supersymmetry breaking in a long-lived meta-stable vacuum is a phenomenologically viable possibility. This relatively unexplored avenue leads to many new models of dynamical supersymmetry breaking. Here, we present a surprisingly simple class of models with meta-stable dynamical supersymmetry breaking: N=1 supersymmetric QCD, with massive flavors. Though these theories are strongly coupled, we definitively demonstrate the existence of meta-stable vacua by using the free-magnetic dual. Model building challenges, such as large flavor symmetries and the absence of an R-symmetry, are eas…
A phenomenological approach for the universal mass matrix model with a broken flavor 2 <-> 3 symmetry is explored by introducing the 2 <-> 3 antisymmetric parts of mass matrices for quarks and charged leptons . We present explicit texture components of the matrices, which are consistent with all the neutrino oscillation experiments and quark mixing data. The mass matrices have a common structure for quarks and leptons, while the large lepton mixings and the small quark mixings are derived with no fine tuning due to the difference of the phase factors. The model predicts a value, 2.4 x 10^{-3},…
To include the quark sector, the $A_{5}\equiv I$ (icosahedron) four generation lepton model is extended to a binary icosahedral symmetry $I'$ flavor model. We find the masses of fermions, including the heavy sectors, can be accommodated. At leading order the CKM matrix is the identity and the PMNS matrix, resulting from same set of vacua, corresponds to tribimaximal mixings.
We demonstrate that sizable neutrino flavor oscillations can be generated in a model with large extra spacetime dimensions even if the physics on the brane is flavor-diagonal, the bulk neutrino theory is flavor-neutral, and the brane/bulk couplings are flavor-blind. This is thus a compact model for addressing neutrino flavor oscillations in higher dimensions. We also discuss several phenomenological aspects of the ``bulk-mediated'' neutrino oscillations inherent in this model, and show that this model contains some potentially important new phenomenological features in the limit of large brane…
In the present work we perform a phenomenological analysis of the effective low energy models with Pati-Salam (PS) gauge symmetry derived in the context of D-branes. A main issue in these models arises from the fact that the right-handed fermions and the PS-symmetry breaking Higgs field transform identically under the PS symmetry, causing unnatural matter-Higgs mixing effects. We argue that this problem could be solved in particular D-brane setups where these fields arise in different intersections. We further observe that whenever a large Higgs mass term is generated in a particular class of …
We present a class of supersymmetric models in which symmetry considerations alone dictate the form of the soft SUSY breaking Lagrangian. We develop a class of minimal models, denoted as sMSSM -- for flavor symmetry-based minimal supersymmetric standard model, which respect a grand unified symmetry such as SO(10) and a non-Abelian flavor symmetry H which suppresses SUSY-induced flavor violation. Explicit examples are constructed with the flavor symmetry being gauged SU(2)_H and SO(3)_H with the three families transforming as 2 + 1 and 3 representations respectively. A simple solution is found …
Using phenomenological formulae, we deduce the masses and quantum numbers of the quarks from two elementary quarks ($ε_{u}$ and $ε_{d}$) first. Then using the sum laws and a binding energy formula, in terms of the qqq baryon model and SU(4), we deduce the masses and quantum numbers of the important baryons from the deduced quarks. At the same time, using the sum laws and a binding energy formula, in terms of the quark-antiquark bound state meson model, we deduce the masses and quantum numbers of the mesons from the deduced quarks. The deduced masses of the baryons and mesons are 98% consistent…
We find the phase and flavor symmetry breaking pattern of each N=1 supersymmetric vacuum of SU(n_c) and USp(2 n_c) gauge theories, constructed from the exactly solvable N=2 theories by perturbing them with small adjoint and generic bare hypermultiplet (quark) masses. In SU(n_c) theories with n_f \leq n_c the vacua are labelled by an integer r, in which the flavor U(n_f) symmetry is dynamically broken to U(r) \times U(n_f-r) in the limit of vanishing bare hyperquark masses. In the r=1 vacua the dynamical symmetry breaking is caused by the condensation of magnetic monopoles in the n_f representa…
In this paper we show how some flavor symmetries may be derived from the heterotic string, when compactified on a 6D orbifold. In the body of the paper we focus on the $D_4$ family symmetry, recently obtained in $Z_3 \times Z_2$ orbifold constructions. We show how this flavor symmetry constrains fermion masses, as well as the soft SUSY breaking mass terms. Flavor symmetry breaking can generate the hierarchy of fermion masses and at the same time the flavor symmetry suppresses large flavor changing neutral current processes.
The 't Hooft six quark flavor mixing interaction (N_f=3) is bosonized by the path integral method. The considered complete Lagrangian is constructed on the basis of the combined 't Hooft and U(3)X U(3) extended chiral four fermion Nambu -- Jona-Lasinio interactions. The method of the steepest descents is used to derive the effective mesonic Lagrangian. Additionally to the known lowest order stationary phase (SP) result of Reinhardt and Alkofer we obtain the contribution from the small quantum fluctuations of bosonic configurations around their stationary phase trajectories. Fluctuations give r…
We extend the free fermionic classification methodology to the class of standard-like heterotic-string vacua, in which the $SO(10)$ GUT symmetry is broken at the string level to $SU(3)\times SU(2)\times U(1)^2$. The space of GGSO free phase configurations in this case is vastly enlarged compared to the corresponding $SO(6)\times SO(4)$ and $SU(5)\times U(1)$ vacua. Extracting substantial numbers of phenomenologically viable models therefore requires a modification of the classification methods. This is achieved by identifying conditions on the GGSO projection coefficients, which are satisfied …
We study the explicit form of Poincaré and discrete transformations of flavor states in a two-flavor scalar model, which represents the simplest example of the field mixing. Because of the particular form of the flavor vacuum condensate, we find that the aforementioned symmetries are spontaneously broken. The ensuing vacuum stability group is identified with the Euclidean group E(3). With the help of Fabri-Picasso theorem, we show that flavor vacua with different time labels and in different Lorentz frames are unitarily inequivalent to each other and they constitute a manifold of zero-flavor-c…
There are theoretical and phenomenological motivations that there may exist additional heavy Z' bosons with family non-universal couplings. Flavor mixing in the quark and lepton sectors will then lead to flavor changing couplings of the heavy Z', and also of the ordinary Z when Z-Z' mixing is included. The general formalism of such effects is described, and applications are made to a variety of flavor changing and CP-violating tree and loop processes. Results are described for three specific cases motivated by a specific heterotic string model and by phenomenological considerations, including …
New types of confining phase emerge when some singular SCFT's appearing as infrared fixed points of N=2 supersymmetric QCD (SQCD) are deformed by an N=1 adjoint mass term. We make further checks on the Gaiotto-Seiberg-Tachikawa (GST) description of these vacua against the symmetry and vacuum counting argument, and show that the GST variables correctly describe these systems, brought into confinement phase by the N=1 perturbation. Several examples of such vacua, USp(2N) and SU(N) theories with four flavors and SO(N) theories with one or two flavors, are discussed.
For the electroweak interactions, the massive neutrino perturbative kinematical procedure is developed in the massive neutrino Fock space. This yields the dominant Lorentz invariant Standard Model mass-less flavor neutrino cross-sections as well as the neutrino oscillation cross-sections some of which are Lorentz invariance and flavor conservation violating. But all these oscillating cross-sections being proportional to the squares of neutrino masses are practically unobservable in the laboratory; however, they are consistent with the original Pontecorvo neutrino oscillating transition probabi…
The problem of representation for flavor states of mixed neutrinos is discussed. By resorting to recent results, it is shown that a specific representation exists in which a number of conceptual problems are resolved. Phenomenological consequences of our analysis are explored.
With the renewed interest in vector-like fermion extensions of the Standard Model, we present here a study of multiple vector-like theories and their phenomenological implications. Our focus is mostly on minimal flavor conserving theories that couple the vector-like fermions to the SM gauge fields and mix only weakly with SM fermions so as to avoid flavor problems. We present calculations for precision electroweak and vector-like state decays, which are needed to investigate compatibility with currently known data. We investigate the impact of vector-like fermions on Higgs boson production and…
The partition function of QCD is analyzed for an arbitrary number of flavors, N_f, and arbitrary quark masses including the contributions from all topological sectors in the Leutwyler--Smilga regime. For given N_f and arbitrary vacuum angle, θ, the partition function can be reduced to N_f-2 angular integrations of single Bessel functions. For two and three flavors, the θdependence of the QCD vacuum is studied in detail. For N_f= 2 and 3, the chiral condensate decreases monotonically as θincreases from zero to πand the chiral condensate develops a cusp at θ=πfor degenerate quark masses in the m…
We discuss the phenomenology of type-II seesaw by extending the Standard Model with additional Higgs doublets and scalar triplets additionally invoked with $Δ(27)$ flavor symmetry for the explanation of non-zero neutrino masses and mixings, matter-antimatter asymmetry and lepton flavor violation. The non-zero neutrino masses can be realized via type-II seesaw mechanism by introducing scalar triplets transforming as triplets under $Δ(27)$ while we add additional $SU(2)_L$ scalar doublets to have correct charge lepton masses. We further demonstrate with detailed numerical analysis in agreement w…
Apparent regularities in fermion masses and mixings are often associated with physics at a high flavor scale, especially in the context of discrete flavor symmetries. One of the main reasons for that is that the correct vacuum alignment requires usually some high scale mechanism to be phenomenologically acceptable. Contrary to this expectation, we present in this paper a renormalizable radiative neutrino mass model with an A4 flavor symmetry in the lepton sector, which is broken at the electroweak scale. For that we use a novel way to achieve the VEV alignment via an extended symmetry in the f…
We introduce the flavor symmetry ${\bf Z}_M \times {\bf Z}_N \times D_4$ into the $SU(6) \times SU(2)_R$ string-inspired model. The cyclic group ${\bf Z}_M$ and the dihedral group $D_4$ are R symmetries, while ${\bf Z}_N$ is a non-R symmetry. By imposing the anomaly-free conditions on the model, we obtain a viable solution under many phenomenological constraints coming from the particle spectra. For neutrino sector, we find a LMA-MSW solution but not SMA-MSW ones. The solution includes phenomenologically acceptable results concerning fermion masses and mixings and also concerning hierarchical …
We introduce an $N=1$ supergravity model based on the gauged shift symmetry of a single chiral multiplet, which can be identified with the string dilaton or a compactification modulus. The model allows for a tunably small and positive value of the cosmological constant. The gravitino mass parameter and the dilaton Vacuum Expectation Value are separately tunable. In a second part we analyze the quantum consistency of these models. Recent work on anomalies in supergravity theories with Fayet-Iliopoulos terms was extended, such that their results can be interpreted from a field-theoretic point of…
We study previously introduced models of pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson Higgs from linearly realized minimal coset SO(5)/SO(4) and matter in the fundamental in supersymmetric theories. Partial compositeness is at work for top and electroweak gauge fields. New states potentially relevant for LHC signatures are identified and we show how to reinterpret existing experimental results as exclusion bounds. The lightest colored particles, with a mass below the TeV, are fermionic and scalars top partners. We outline a viable mechanism originating masses of other Standard Model quarks: they result from t…
We investigate the symmetry breaking pattern of the democratic mass matrix model, which leads to the small flavor mixing in quark sector and bi-large mixing in lepton sector. We present the symmetry breaking matrices in quark sector which are determined by alternative ways instead of conventional ansatz. These matrices might be useful for understanding the origin of democratic symmetry and its breaking.
Generalizing the recent work on three-family Type I compactifications, we classify perturbative Type I vacua obtained via compactifying on the T^6/Z_2 X Z_2 X Z_3 orbifold with all possible Wilson lines. In particular, we concentrate on models with gauge groups containing the Standard Model gauge group SU(3)_c X SU(2)_w X U(1)_Y as a subgroup. All of the vacua we obtain contain D5-branes and are non-perturbative from the heterotic viewpoint. The models we discuss have three-chiral families. We study some of their phenomenological properties, and point out non-trivial problems arising in these …
Moduli stabilization in the type IIA massive string theory so far was achieved only in the AdS vacua. The uplifting to dS vacua has not been performed as yet: neither the analogs of type IIB anti-D3 brane at the tip of the conifold, nor the appropriate D-terms have been identified. The hope was recently expressed that the F-term uplifting may work. We investigate this possibility in the context of a simplified version of the type IIA model developed in hep-th/0505160 and find that the F-term does not uplift the AdS vacua to dS vacua with positive CC. Thus it remains a challenging task to find …
Phenomenological aspects of flavor changing processes are considered in the context of the supergravity model.Various flavor changing neutral current processes in B and K decays are calculated in such models. For lepton flavor violating processes the $μ^+ \to e γ$ branching ratio and the T odd triple vector correlation for the $μ^+ \to e^+ e^+ e^-$ process are investigated in the SU(5) SUSY GUT. Possibility to find SUSY effects through these Flavor changing processes in future experiments are also discussed.
We discuss the phenomenological impact of a particularly interesting corner of the MSSM: the large tan(beta) regime. The capabilities of leptonic and hadronic Flavor Violating processes in shedding light on physics beyond the Standard Model are reviewed. Moreover, we show that tests of Lepton Universality in charged current processes can represent an interesting handle to obtain relevant information on New Physics scenarios.
We analyze phenomenological aspects of the quantum field theoretical formulation of meson mixing and obtain the exact oscillation formula in the presence of the decay. This formula is different from quantum mechanical formula by additional high-frequency oscillation terms. In the infinite volume limit, the space of the flavor quantum states is unitarily inequivalent to the space of energy eigenstates.
Exploiting an approximate phenomenological symmetry of the $J^{PC}=1^{+-}$ light axial vector mesons and using pole dominance, we calculate the flavor contributions to the nucleon tensor charge. The result depends on the decay constants of the axial vector mesons and their couplings to the nucleons.
Reductions from odd to even dimensionalities ($5\to 4$ or $3\to 2$), for which the effective low-energy theory contains chiral fermions, present us with a mismatch between ultraviolet and infrared anomalies. This applies to both local (gauge) and global currents; here we consider the latter case. We show that the mismatch can be explained by taking into account a change in the spectral asymmetry of the massive modes--an odd-dimensional analog of the phenomenon described by the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer theorem in even dimensionalities. The result has phenomenological implications: we present a scen…
We address the implementation of non-Abelian Wilson lines in D=4 N=1 Type IIB orientifold constructions. We present an explicit three-family example with the gauge group (U(4)xU(2)xSU(2)xSU(2))^2x(U(6)xSp(4))^2 and give the particle spectrum and the trilinear superpotential. Emphasizing the new subtleties associated with the introduction of non-Abelian Wilson lines, we show that the Abelian gauge anomalies are cancelled by the Green-Schwarz-type mechanism, and calculate the Fayet-Iliopoulos terms and gauge coupling corrections. The analysis thus sets a stage for further investigations of the p…
Flavor structure of soft supersymmetry breaking parameters is studied in a certain type of effective supergravity theory derived from moduli/dilaton dominated supersymmetry breaking. Some interesting sum rules for soft scalar masses are presented. They constrain their flavor structure and predict some interesting patterns appeared in soft scalar masses in the non-universal case. We also study the alignment phenomena in the flavor space of soft breaking parameters due to Yukawa couplings and discuss their phenomenological consequences.
We discuss an interesting possibility of nontrivial, quark-mass induced chiral vacuum alignment in color-flavor locking phase of cold, dense QCD. With the simplifying assumption that the gaps for quarks are identical to those of antiquarks and the light quark masses are given by $m_u = m_d$ and $ m_s/m_d=15$, we find the true chiral vacuum can align only to one of the discrete number of directions in the continuum of chiral vacua. The alignment depends on the size of the diquark condensates, and the vacuum transitions between the discrete vacua caused by the evolution of the diquark condensate…
For type I seesaw and in the basis where the charged lepton and heavy right-handed neutrino mass matrices are real and diagonal, four has been shown to be the maximum number of zeros allowed in the neutrino Yukawa coupling matrix $Y_ν$. These four zero textures have been classified into two distinct categories. We investigate certain phenomenological consequences of these textures within a supersymmetric framework. This is done by using conditions implied on elements of the neutrino Majorana mass matrix for textures of each category in $Y_ν$. These conditions turn out to be stable under radiat…
We construct N=1 and N=0 chiral four-dimensional vacua of flux compactification in Type IIB string theory. These vacua have the common features that they are free of tadpole instabilities (both NSNS and RR) even for models with N=0 supersymmetry. In addition, the dilaton/complex structure moduli are stabilised and the supergravity background metric is warped. We present an example in which the low energy spectrum contains the MSSM spectrum with three generations of chiral matter. In the N=0 models, the background fluxes which stabilise the moduli also induce soft supersymmetry breaking terms i…
The magnitude of the vacuum expectation value of the Gukov-Vafa-Witten superpotential $|W_0|$ plays a central role in the phenomenology of type IIB flux compactifications. Recent analytical constructions have shown that perturbatively flat vacua can be used to obtain very low values of $|W_0|$. We present systematic algorithms to carry out exhaustive numerical searches for such vacua. We also analyse them in the statistical context, as part of the entire ensemble of type IIB flux vacua at low $|W_0|$. Our preliminary analysis indicates that these perturbatively flat vacua are statistically spa…
We derive type IIB vacua which are very promising to put string theory to experimental test. These are Calabi-Yau compactifications with a 4D fibration over a 2D base. The moduli are fixed in such a way to obtain a very anisotropic configuration where the size of the 2D base is exponentially larger than the size of the 4D fibre. These provide stringy realisations of the supersymmetric large extra dimensions scenario and extensions of the ADD scenario which are characterised by TeV-scale strings and two micron-sized extra dimensions. We also study the phenomenological properties of hidden Abeli…
One can define generalized models of gaugino condensation as theories which dynamically break a discrete R-symmetry, but do not break supersymmetry. We consider general examples consisting of gauge and matter fields, and the minimal number of gauge singlet fields to avoid flat directions in the potential. We explore which R-symmetries can arise, and their spontaneous breaking. In general, we find that the discrete symmetry is $\mathbb{Z}_{2b_0R}$ and the number of supersymmetric vacua is $b_0$, where $b_0$ is the coefficient of the one-loop beta function. Results are presented for various grou…
