On predictions from spontaneously broken flavor symmetries

TL;DR

This paper examines how corrections to the Kähler potential in supersymmetric flavor models significantly impact predictions of lepton masses and mixing angles, highlighting the importance of considering these effects for accurate model predictions.

Contribution

It introduces analytic formulas to evaluate the impact of Kähler potential corrections on lepton flavor predictions in supersymmetric models with flavor symmetries.

Findings

Kähler potential corrections can be sizable and affect predictions

Analytic formulas help understand the impact on masses and mixing angles

Residual symmetries after flavon VEVs influence model outcomes

Abstract

We discuss the predictive power of supersymmetric models with flavor symmetries, focusing on the lepton sector of the standard model. In particular, we comment on schemes in which, after certain `flavons' acquire their vacuum expectation values (VEVs), the charged lepton Yukawa couplings and the neutrino mass matrix appear to have certain residual symmetries. In most analyses, only corrections to the holomorphic superpotential from higher-dimensional operators are considered (for instance, in order to generate a realistic $\theta_{13}$ mixing angle). In general, however, the flavon VEVs also modify the K\"ahler potential and, therefore, the model predictions. We show that these corrections to the naive results can be sizable. Furthermore, we present simple analytic formulae that allow us to understand the impact of these corrections on the predictions for the masses and mixing parameters.