Mapping and probing Froggatt-Nielsen solutions to the quark flavor puzzle

Journal Article · 29 January 2025 · Physical Review. D.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.111.015042 · OSTI ID:2507468

Cornella, Claudia ; Curtin, David ; Neil, Ethan T.; Thompson, Jedidiah O.

The Froggatt-Nielsen (FN) mechanism is an elegant solution to the flavor problem. In its minimal application to the quark sector, the different quark types and generations have different charges under a $U(1{)}_X$ flavor symmetry. The SM Yukawa couplings are generated below the flavor breaking scale with hierarchies dictated by the quark charge assignments. Only a handful of charge assignments are generally considered in the literature. We analyze the complete space of possible charge assignments with $\left|X_{q_i}\right|\le 4$ and perform both a set of Bayesian-inspired numerical scans and an analytical spurion analysis to identify those charge assignments that reliably generate SM-like quark mass and mixing hierarchies. The resulting set of top-20 flavor charge assignments significantly enlarges the viable space of FN models but is still compact enough to enable focused phenomenological study. We then apply our numerical methodology to demonstrate that these distinct charge assignments result in the generation of correlated flavor-violating four-quark operators characterized by significantly varied strengths, potentially differing substantially from the possibilities previously explored in the literature. Future precision measurement of $\mathrm{\Delta }F=2$ observables, along with increasingly accurate SM predictions, may therefore enable us to distinguish among otherwise equally plausible FN charges, thus shedding light on the UV structure of the flavor sector. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0010005
• OSTI ID: 2507468
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D., Journal Name: Physical Review. D. Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 111; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 2470-0010
• Publisher: American Physical SocietyCopyright Statement
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English