Walking technicolor models

Abstract

Recent work on technicolor theories with small β-functions has shown that the flavour changing neutral current problem which besets any realistic extended technicolor model might be solved by Holdom's original suggestion of raising the extended technicolor scales. In this paper we apply these field theoretic ideas to the problem of constructing a realistic model of the quark and lepton mass spectrum. We discuss two closely related models: (1) An extended technicolor model based on the gauge group SO(10) ETC × SO(10) GUT; (2) A composite/elementary extended technicolor model based on the gauge group SO(10) MC × SO(10) ETC × SU(5) GUT. Model (1) is relatively simple, and contains three families of quarks and leptons plus an SO(7) TC family of technifermions. The technicolor sector corresponds to one of the examples of walking technicolor discussed by Appelquist et al. The model is fully discussed with particular emphasis on the resulting quark and lepton mass spectrum. Charged lepton masses are adequately described, but the quark masses are degenerate in pairs with zero mixing angles. Model (2) shares the desirable low energy spectrum of Model (1) but in addition provides a mechanism for enhancing the mass of u-type quarks relative to d-type quarks, based on non-perturbative compositeness corrections. We discuss these compositeness corrections, as far as a perturbative treatment allows, and develop techniques for calculating quark masses and mixing angles. We apply these techniques to the first two families of quarks, and are encouraged to find that we can reproduce the observed features of u-d mass inversion for the first family, and Cabibbo mixing. Model (2) leads to the prediction of D 0− D 0 mixing, K L → e ± μ ∓, K + → π +e − μ +, all at rates close to current experimental limits. The model also predicts three families and a top quark mass m t ≈ 50 GeV.