Journal of High Energy Physics (Feb 2020)

Gauge-flavon unification

  • Alfredo Aranda,
  • Francisco J. de Anda,
  • Stephen F. King

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP02(2020)012
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2020, no. 2
pp. 1 – 20

Abstract

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Abstract In this paper we propose the idea that flavons can emerge from extra dimensional gauge fields, referred to as gauge-flavon unification (GFU) analogous to gauge-Higgs unification (GHU). We assume that there is a gauged family symmetry in extra dimensions and that the flavons are the extra dimensional components of the gauge field. This provides a simple mechanism to align the VEVs of the flavons through a combination of Wilson lines and orbifold symmetry breaking. We present some simple 5d examples of GFU based on SO(3) and SU(4) gauged family symmetry, the latter case yielding SU(3) × U(1) gauged family symmetry in 4d, broken by triplet and antitriplet flavons, with effective couplings to fermions. We also present a general formalism for Wilson lines and orbifolds, in any number of dimensions, including non-commutative aspects Wilson lines, which may be useful for aligning additional flavons as required for realistic models.

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