Disassembling the Clockwork Mechanism

Understand

The clockwork mechanism is a means of naturally generating exponential hierarchies in theories without significant hierarchies among fundamental parameters.

• We emphasize the role of interactions in the clockwork mechanism, demonstrating that clockwork is an intrinsically abelian phenomenon precluded in non-abelian theories such as Yang-Mills, non-linear sigma models, and gravity.
• We also show that clockwork is not realized in extra-dimensional theories through purely geometric effects, but may be generated by appropriate localization of zero modes.