Low Scale Flavor Gauge Symmetries

TL;DR

This paper explores gauging the Standard Model flavor group with anomaly cancellation, leading to a new flavor symmetry mechanism that suppresses flavor violations and predicts potentially observable gauge bosons at collider energies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel flavor gauge symmetry model with anomaly cancellation, resulting in an inverted fermion mass hierarchy and suppressed flavor violations, offering an alternative to Minimal Flavor Violation.

Findings

Flavor violating effects are controlled by the Standard Model Yukawa couplings.

New gauge flavor bosons could be as low as the electroweak scale.

Potential for detection at Tevatron and LHC.

Abstract

We study the possibility of gauging the Standard Model flavor group. Anomaly cancellation leads to the addition of fermions whose mass is inversely proportional to the known fermion masses. In this case all flavor violating effects turn out to be controlled roughly by the Standard Model Yukawa, suppressing transitions for the light generations. Due to the inverted hierarchy the scale of new gauge flavor bosons could be as low as the electroweak scale without violating any existing bound but accessible at the Tevatron and the LHC. The mechanism of flavor protection potentially provides an alternative to Minimal Flavor Violation, with flavor violating effects suppressed by hierarchy of scales rather than couplings.