On flavor symmetries of phenomenologically viable string compactifications

Abstract

Heterotic orbifolds can explain the origin of flavor symmetries and the flavor representations of matter fields in particle physics as a result of the geometric properties of the associated string states in the compact space. After a review of the method to obtain flavor symmetries in these models, we determine the most frequent non-Abelian flavor symmetries appearing in promising Abelian heterotic orbifolds. Interestingly, these symmetries correspond only to D_4, Delta(54) and products of these symmetries and Abelian factors. A large set of promising models exhibits purely Abelian flavor symmetries. We finally explore the phenomenological potential of a sample model endowed with Delta(54) assuming certain ad hoc flavon expectation values.

12 pages, 3 tables, 1 figure. To be published in Journal of Physics Conference Series (IOP). Proceedings of the XXXI Annual Meeting of the Division of Particles and Fields of the Mexican Physical Society; v2: typos corrected