Abstract:
In this seminar, I will first review the main features of models of fermion
masses and mixing based on new symmetries of flavour. I will then discuss
how light the new flavour dynamics is allowed to be by the constraints from
flavour-changing processes and possible UV completions of this kind of models.
In the second part of the seminar, I will introduce dark matter (DM) as a
fermionic singlet under the Standard Model (SM) gauge group that is however
charged under the flavour symmetry. Interactions between DM and SM particles
are then only mediated by the scalar fields that spontaneously break the flavour
symmetry, the so-called flavons. In the case of gauged flavour symmetries, the
interactions are also mediated by the flavour gauge bosons. I will discuss the
construction and the generic features of this class of models and then the
phenomenology of an explicit example.
