Coleman–Weinberg symmetry breaking in SU(8) induced by a third rank antisymmetric tensor scalar field II: the fermion spectrum

Abstract

We continue our study of Coleman–Weinberg symmetry breaking induced by a third rank antisymmetric tensor scalar, in the context of the SU(8) model (Adler 2014 Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 29 1450130) we proposed earlier. We focus in this paper on qualitative features that will determine whether the model can make contact with the observed particle spectrum. We discuss the mechanism for giving the spin field a mass by the BEH mechanism, and analyze the remaining massless spin fermions, the global chiral symmetries, and the running couplings after symmetry breaking. We note that the smallest gluon mass matrix eigenvalue has an eigenvector suggestive of U(1)B−L, and conjecture that the theory runs to an infrared fixed point at which there is a massless gluon with 3 to −1 ratios in generator components. Assuming this, we discuss a mechanism for making contact with the standard model, based on a conjectured asymmetric breaking of Sp(4) to SU(2) subgroups, one of which is the electroweak SU(2), and the other of which is a ‘technicolor’ group that binds the original SU(8) model fermions, which play the role of ‘preons’, into composites. Quarks can emerge as 5 preon composites and leptons as 3 preon composites, with consequent stability of the proton against decay to a single lepton plus a meson. A composite Higgs boson can emerge as a two preon composite. Since anomaly matching for the relevant conserved global symmetry current is not obeyed by three fermion families, emergence of three composite families requires formation of a Goldstone boson with quantum numbers matching this current, which can be a light dark matter candidate.