Beyond MFV in family symmetry theories of fermion masses

Understand

Minimal Flavour Violation (MFV) postulates that the only source of flavour changing neutral currents and CP violation, as in the Standard Model, is the CKM matrix.

• However it does not address the origin of fermion masses and mixing and models that do usually have a structure that goes well beyond the MFV framework.
• In this paper we compare the MFV predictions with those obtained in models based on spontaneously broken (horizontal) family symmetries, both Abelian and non-Abelian.
• The generic suppression of flavour changing processes in these models turns out to be weaker than in the MFV hypothesis.