The Flavour Puzzle and Grand Unification

por Prof. Ketan Patel (IISER-Mohali, India)

miércoles 7 jun. 2017 12:00 → 13:30 Europe/Madrid

Seminar Room, 1.1.1 (IFIC)

From the electron mass to the top-quark mass, the masses of electrically charged fundamental fermions span over six orders of magnitude. Neutrino masses expand this range by another at least six orders of magnitude. Further, it is a puzzling fact that there exist several similarities and differences between the masses and mixing patterns of different fermion flavours. While the standard model of particle physics can successfully account for the observed fermion masses, it does not shed any light on this puzzle. Some of its extensions, originally proposed for the unification of fundamental interactions, provide a more appropriate platform to address this puzzle by unifying also the fundamental fermions. In this talk, I will review some of the grand unified theory based attempts to understand and resolve the flavour puzzle. Examples of approaches based on new symmetries will be discussed. Alternative proposals based on theories in higher spacetime dimensions will also be discussed.