A realistic pattern of fermion masses from a five-dimensional SO(10) model

TL;DR

This paper presents a five-dimensional SO(10) grand unified model that naturally explains fermion mass hierarchies and mixing angles using bulk matter fields and orbifold compactification, aligning with observed particle physics data.

Contribution

It introduces a realistic 5D SO(10) model with exponential fermion profiles and a minimal scalar sector, addressing fermion masses, mixing, and neutrino properties.

Findings

Reproduces observed fermion mass hierarchies and mixing angles.

Predicts a normally ordered neutrino mass spectrum with lightest neutrino below 0.01 eV.

Shows the model's robustness across various parameter variants.

Abstract

We provide a unified description of fermion masses and mixing angles in the framework of a supersymmetric grand unified SO(10) model with anarchic Yukawa couplings of order unity. The space-time is five dimensional and the extra flat spatial dimension is compactified on the orbifold $S^1/(Z_2 \times Z_2')$, leading to Pati-Salam gauge symmetry on the boundary where Yukawa interactions are localised. The gauge symmetry breaking is completed by means of a rather economic scalar sector, avoiding the doublet-triplet splitting problem. The matter fields live in the bulk and their massless modes get exponential profiles, which naturally explain the mass hierarchy of the different fermion generations. Quarks and leptons properties are naturally reproduced by a mechanism, first proposed by Kitano and Li, that lifts the SO(10) degeneracy of bulk masses in terms of a single parameter. The model provides a realistic pattern of fermion masses and mixing angles for large values of $\tan\beta$. It favours normally ordered neutrino mass spectrum with the lightest neutrino mass below 0.01 eV and no preference for leptonic CP violating phases. The right handed neutrino mass spectrum is very hierarchical and does not allow for thermal leptogenesis. We analyse several variants of the basic framework and find that the results concerning the fermion spectrum are remarkably stable.