Family symmetries


In particle physics, family symmetries or horizontal symmetries are various discrete, global, or local symmetries between quark-lepton families or generations. While being conceptually useful, these symmetries are not yet finally confirmed. Some potentially relevant option considered in the literature may be associated with the local chiral SUF family symmetry introduced in 1980 and further developed.

SU(3)

The choice of the SUF as the underlying family symmetry beyond the Standard Model appears related to the following issues:
With these natural criteria accepted, other family symmetry candidates have turned out to be at least partially discriminated.

Applications

Among the applications of the SUF symmetry, the most interesting ones are the realistic description of the quark and lepton masses and mixings, neutrino masses and oscillations, rare processes etc. with a natural suppression of all dangerous flavor-changing transitions. The special sector of applications is related to a newly described type of topological defects - flavored cosmic strings and monopoles appearing during the spontaneous violation of the SUF which may be considered as possible candidates for the cold dark matter in the Universe.