A framework for dynamical generation of flavor mixing

Abstract

We present a dynamical mechanism à la Nambu-Jona-Lasinio [1] for the generation of masses and mixing for two interacting fermion fields. The analysis is carried out in the framework introduced long ago by Umezawa et al. [2], in which mass generation is achieved via inequivalent representations, and that we generalize to the case of two generations. The method allows a clear identification of the vacuum structure for each physical phase, confirming previous results [3] about the distinct physical nature of the vacuum for fields with definite mass and fields with definite flavor. Implications for the leptonic sector of the Standard Model are briefly discussed.