Anatomy of a top-down approach to discrete and modular flavor symmetry

TL;DR

This paper explores a top-down approach within heterotic string theory to derive a unified eclectic flavor symmetry, encompassing various discrete and CP symmetries, and discusses implications for flavor model building.

Contribution

It presents a specific example of deriving eclectic flavor symmetry from string theory and analyzes its breaking mechanisms, offering insights for bottom-up flavor models.

Findings

Unified origin of multiple flavor symmetries identified

Sources of symmetry breaking analyzed

Implications for flavor model building discussed

Abstract

The framework of compactified heterotic string theory offers consistent ultraviolet (UV) completions of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. In this approach, the existence of flavor symmetries beyond the SM is imperative and the flavor symmetries can be derived from the top-down. Such a derivation uncovers a unified origin of traditional discrete flavor symmetries, discrete modular flavor symmetries, discrete R symmetries of supersymmetry, as well as CP symmetry - altogether called the eclectic flavor symmetry. I will show a specific example of such a top-down derived eclectic flavor symmetry, discuss the different sources of breaking of the eclectic flavor symmetry, as well as the possible lessons for bottom-up flavor model building.