Aligned and Spontaneous Flavor Violation.

Area of Science:

• Particle Physics
• Beyond Standard Model Physics
• Quantum Field Theory

Background:

• The Standard Model (SM) describes fundamental particles and forces.
• Yukawa couplings in the SM govern quark masses and mixings.
• Existing models struggle to explain flavor hierarchies and CP violation.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce a systematic spurion setup called aligned flavor violation (AFV).
• Explore spontaneous flavor violation (SFV) as a natural subset of AFV.
• Investigate implications for flavor-changing neutral currents and new physics scales.

Main Methods:

• Developed the aligned flavor violation (AFV) spurion framework.
• Analyzed spontaneous flavor violation (SFV) arising from spontaneously broken flavor and CP symmetries.
• Employed effective field theory techniques to study SFV models.

Main Results:

• AFV allows new physics couplings aligned with SM Yukawa couplings.
• SFV naturally suppresses flavor-changing neutral currents.
• SFV new physics with preferential couplings to light quarks may exist at the TeV scale.

Conclusions:

• AFV provides a flexible framework for new physics beyond the Standard Model.
• SFV offers a compelling scenario with suppressed flavor-changing neutral currents.
• The TeV scale is a viable region for discovering SFV physics, particularly affecting first and second generation quarks.