Fermion Masses and Mixing in General Warped Extra Dimensional Models

We analyze fermion masses and mixing in a general warped extra dimensional model, where all the Standard Model (SM) fields, including the Higgs, are allowed to propagate in the bulk. In this context, a slightly broken flavor symmetry imposed universally on all fermion fields, without distinction, can generate the full flavor structure of the SM, including quarks, charged leptons and neutrinos. For quarks and charged leptons, the exponential sensitivity of their wave-functions to small flavor breaking effects yield naturally hierarchical masses and mixing as it is usual in warped models with fermions in the bulk. In the neutrino sector, the exponential wave-function factors can be flavor-blind and thus insensitive to the small flavor symmetry breaking effects, directly linking their masses and mixing angles to the flavor symmetric structure of the 5D neutrino Yukawa couplings. The Higgs must be localized in the bulk and the model is naturally more successful in generalized warped scenarios where the metric background solution is different than $AdS_5$. We study these features in two simple frameworks, flavor complimentarily, and flavor democracy, which provide specific predictions and correlations between quarks and leptons, testable as more precise data in the neutrino sector becomes available.

Unified Flavor Symmetry from warped dimensions

We propose a scenario which accommodates all the masses and mixings of the SM fermions in a model of warped extra-dimensions with all matter fields in the bulk. In this scenario, the same flavor symmetric structure is imposed on all the fermions of the Standard Model (SM), including neutrinos. Due to the exponential sensitivity on bulk fermion masses, a small breaking of the symmetry can be greatly enhanced and produce seemingly un-symmetric hierarchical masses and small mixing angles among the charged fermion zero-modes (SM quarks and charged leptons) and wash-out the obvious effects of the symmetry. With the Higgs field leaking into the bulk, and Dirac neutrinos sufficiently localized towards the UV boundary, the neutrino mass hierarchy and flavor structure will still be largely dominated by the fundamental flavor structure. The neutrino sector would then reflect the fundamental flavor structure, whereas the quark sector would probe the effects of the flavor symmetry breaking sector. As an example, we explore these features in the context of a family permutation symmetry imposed in both quark and lepton sectors.

Partial $mu-tau$ Textures and Leptogenesis

Motivated by the recent results from Daya Bay, Reno and Double Chooz Collaborations, we study the consequences of small departures from exact $mu-tau$ symmetry in the neutrino sector, to accommodate a non-vanishing value of the element $V_{e3}$ from the leptonic mixing matrix. Within the see-saw framework, we identify simple patterns of Dirac mass matrices that lead to approximate $mu-tau$ symmetric neutrino mass matrices, which are consistent with the neutrino oscillation data and lead to non-vanishing mixing angle $V_{e3}$ as well as precise predictions for the CP violating phases. We also show that there is a transparent link between neutrino mixing angles and see-saw parameters, which we further explore within the context of leptogenesis as well as double beta decay phenomenology.

Patterns in the Fermion Mixing Matrix, a bottom-up approach

We first obtain the most general and compact parametrization of the unitary transformation diagonalizing any 3 by 3 hermitian matrix H, as a function of its elements and eigenvalues. We then study a special class of fermion mass matrices, defined by the requirement that all of the diagonalizing unitary matrices (in the up, down, charged lepton and neutrino sectors) contain at least one mixing angle much smaller than the other two. Our new parametrization allows us to quickly extract information on the patterns and predictions emerging from this scheme. In particular we find that the phase difference between two elements of the two mass matrices (of the sector in question) controls the generic size of one of the observable fermion mixing angles: i.e. just fixing that particular phase difference will predict the generic value of one of the mixing angles, irrespective of the value of anything else.