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# Polar Molecular Organisation in Liquid Crystals

## I INTRODUCTION

Phase anisotropy together with fluidity are the basic unifying features of all liquid crystals. Fluidity implies some disorder of the molecular positions in one or more spatial dimensions. Phase anisotropy reflects the directionality of the molecular organisation in these systems and can be of the a-polar type, if each direction in the bulk phase is physically indistinguishable from its opposite, or of the polar type, if such indistinguishability does not hold for all directions. In the latter case the underlying molecular organisation will exhibit polar orientational ordering. Accordingly, the bulk phase could in this case acquire spontaneous electric or magnetic polarisation if the molecules have permanent electric or magnetic dipoles. Aside from their purely scientific interest, the many actual and potential technological applications of liquid ferroelectric and ferromagnetic systems have stimulated intensive research on polar liquid crystals .

In this paper we discuss various molecular mechanisms that have been proposed for the understanding of polar ordering in the most common liquid crystalline phases. We consider low molar mass nematic, smectic and columnar liquid crystal phases and we concentrate on (i) the molecular interactions that could promote or oppose polar organisation and (ii) the quantification of polar orientational ordering in terms of order parameters and of macroscopic physical properties. Our considerations are restricted to electric properties and interactions but all the theoretical arguments can be carried over to magnetic systems as well.

## II POLAR NEMATICS

A polar nematic would be a translationally uniform phase with long-range polar orientational order. The most symmetric such phase is a uniaxial polar nematic, i.e. a nematic with full rotational symmetry about a unique phase-fixed axis denoted by the unit vector $`𝐍`$, the director, but with broken “up-down” symmetry so that the directions $`𝐍`$ and $`𝐍`$ are not equivalent. The minimal molecular asymmetry requirements for the formation of such a phase correspond to uniaxially polar molecules, i.e. polar molecules with an axis $`𝐦`$ of full rotational symmetry, with the polarity rendering the molecule asymmetric with respect to the direction reversal $`𝐦𝐦`$. Due to this asymmetry the ensemble average $`𝐦`$ of the molecular unit vector $`𝐦`$ does not vanish. The single-molecule probability distribution is in this case a function of just one molecular variable, namely $`𝐦𝐍=\mathrm{cos}\theta _{mN}`$, where $`\theta _{mN}`$ is the angle of the molecular unit vector $`𝐦`$ relative to the director $`𝐍`$. The moments of this distribution are conveniently represented by the ensemble averages (order parameters) $`P_lP_l(\mathrm{cos}\theta _{mN})`$ of the Legendre polynomials of rank $`l`$. The quantification of polar ordering for such a system is given by the ensemble average $`𝐦=P_1𝐍`$. The primary measure of the magnitude of polarity is thus the first rank order parameter $`P_1`$. The second rank order parameter $`P_2`$, which is the leading order parameter for common (a-polar) nematics, is related to the breadth of the polar distribution according to the relation

$$\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _{mN}\mathrm{cos}\theta _{mN}^2=(2/3)P_2P_1^2+1/3,$$
(1)
from which it becomes apparent that $`P_1`$ places the following lower bound on $`P_2`$,

$$P_2(3/2)P_1^21/2.$$
(2)
If the molecules forming the uniaxial polar nematic phase carried permanent electric dipole moments $`𝝁`$ with a nonvanishing component $`\mu _{}=𝝁𝐦`$ along the direction of the molecular symmetry axis $`𝐦`$, then the phase would exhibit spontaneous electric polarisation $`𝐏_s^e=𝒩𝝁`$ where $`𝒩`$ denotes the molecular number density and $`𝝁=\mu _{}𝐦`$. Thus, the spontaneous polarisation vector would be in the direction of the phase symmetry axis $`𝐍`$ and proportional to the polar order parameter $`P_1`$ according to the relation

$$𝐏_s^e=𝒩\mu _{}P_1𝐍.$$
(3)
This equation relates, via a molecular property $`\mu _{}`$, a macroscopic electrostatic measure of polarity $`𝐏_s^e`$ to a microscopic measure of polarity represented by the “vector order parameter” $`𝐦=P_1𝐍`$.

There does not seem to be any thermodynamic or symmetry argument forbidding a priory the formation of a polar nematic phase, uniaxial or not. Yet, to date none of the existing low molar mass nematogens is known to exhibit such a phase. It thus becomes theoretically challenging to rationalise, on the molecular level, the a-polarity of common nematics and from there to ask what sort of molecular interactions would be required to stabilise polar ordering in the nematic phase. For example, permanent electric dipole moments of a few Debyes are quite usual for molecules forming nematic phases and have measurable effects on their (a-polar) orientational order . An obvious question is then whether electric dipole interactions could bring about phase polarity in nematics . The answer is negative. A simplified explanation can be sketched as follows.

The interaction potential between two dipoles, $`𝝁`$ and $`𝝁^{}`$ is given by

$$u^{(d)}=[𝝁𝝁^{}3(𝝁𝐫)(𝝁^{}𝐫)]/r^3$$
(4)
where $`𝐫`$ and $`r`$ are the interdipole unit vector and distance respectively. Consider the condensed, positionally disordered, phase of dipolar spherical molecules (i.e. molecules whose interactions in excess the dipole-dipole interaction are isotropic). If short-range position-orientation correlations are completely ignored then the contribution of the electrostatic interaction to the free energy for the phase with polar orientational order (Fig. 1a) vanishes. This is a reflection of the particular dependence of $`u^{(d)}`$ on $`𝐫`$ for fixed dipole directions and interdipole distance. The most directly relevant feature of this dependence is illustrated in Fig. 2a, which shows that the energy of “side-by-side” configurations of parallel dipoles is half the magnitude and of opposite sign relative to the energy of the “head-to-tail” configurations. Since in three dimensions there are two side-by-side configurations for each head-to-tail, the average dipole-dipole energy, in the absence of correlations, vanishes. The same null result is obtained when averaging the dipole-dipole contribution to the free energy in the orientationally disordered phase (Fig 1b), which however has larger entropy and will therefore always be thermodynamically more stable than the polarly ordered state.

Essential to these arguments is the neglect of short-range correlations. The latter, however, are not always negligible. In fact, simulations of hard dipolar spheres have produced, for sufficiently strong dipoles and low densities, stable phases of polar strings, (linear aggregates of dipolar spheres in head to tail succession of the dipole moments, Fig. 1c) . The correlations in these strings are such that the head-to-tail configuration dominates at short distances whereas the side-by-side (parallel or antiparallel) configurations correspond to molecular pairs on different strings, which are therefore more distant. This leads to an electrostatic reduction of the free energy that could compensate for the entropy reduction associated with the formation of the polar strings and thus provide thermodynamic stability relative to the completely disordered phase. On increasing the density, the side-by-side configurations are forced to the same average proximity as the head-to-tail and the chains eventually decompose into a positionally disorder a-polar fluid.

If instead of dipolar spherical molecules one considers elongated molecules with longitudinal dipoles then the polarly ordered condensed phase is further destabilised with respect to the a-polar phase. This happens because now, due to larger separations of the dipoles, the magnitude of the head-to-tail energy is less than twice the magnitude of the side by side energy (Fig. 2b) and therefore the positionally uncorrelated averaging will yield a net increase of the free energy of the polar phase relative to the a-polar one. Thus the stronger the dipole the more it disfavours the polar nematic ordering of the elongated molecules and in fact turns out to favour the a-polar smectic A phase.

In the case of disc-like molecules with central dipoles along the disc symmetry axis, the electrostatic contribution favours the polar ordering. This is so because the head-to-tail energy, due to smaller interdipole separations, is now more than twice the magnitude of the side-by-side energy (see Fig. 2c). As shown in Monte Carlo (MC) simulations, however, the organisation of the polar discs does not correspond to a polar nematic but rather to a columnar phase with polar ordering within individual columns and antiferroelectric configurations of the columns .

It becomes apparent from these considerations that the formation of a polar nematic phase is not favoured by strong longitudinal electric dipoles. It rather requires interactions where the polar disposition of the molecules can be favoured but without forcing them to into any kind of positional register that would destroy the uniform distribution of their positions. Interactions of the amphiphilic type, for example, can favour the polar alignment of elongated molecules, as will be discussed below, but only as a result of (in the present context, at the expense of) phase microsegregation . Furthermore, steric repulsions originating from the polar shape-asymmetry of tapered molecules, wedge shaped, pear shaped, etc, disfavours polar ordering in the undisturbed bulk phase since such shapes pack more efficiently in antiparallel configurations. It thus seems that none of the basic interactions encountered in common liquid crystals, nor any simple combination thereof, favours nematic polar ordering. This explains, at least partly, why a low molar mass nematic phase has not been detected experimentally to date. Recently, Berardi, Ricci and Zannoni  where successful in tailoring a model potential that can produce, under certain parameterisation, a polar nematic phase in MC simulations. Their model interaction essentially behaves in the opposite way to the dipole-dipole interaction (Fig. 2b) in that it assigns the lowest energy to the side-by-side parallel arrangement of a molecular pair, high energy to the parallel head-to-tail and intermediate energy to the side-by-side antiparallel. Of course the identification of real molecules that would interact in the required way is the major step to be taken. In the present state of molecular design efforts, however, it appears that much more is known on what should be avoided than on what is to be pursued.

## III ORTHOGONAL SMECTICS WITH POLAR LAYERS

Polar ordering in orthogonal smectics is quite usual . Known variants of the smectic A phase (Sm-A) with polar layers include the bilayer phases $`A_d`$, $`A_2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ (Fig. 3a,b,c). In these phases the polar asymmetry is exhibited in the direction of the layer normal, with adjacent layers having opposite polarities thus rendering the bulk phase macroscopically a-polar.

On the molecular scale, the structure of the phases $`A_2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ suggests that the molecular interactions giving rise to the polar ordering should be such as to favour the side-by-side parallel alignment of molecules within the same layer while favouring the head-to-head or tail-to-tail alignment of molecules in consecutive layers (Fig. 3a,c). Obviously neither the electric dipole forces nor the purely steric forces associated with wedge-type shape asymmetry favour such configurations; in fact they strongly disfavour them. In contrast, amphipile type forces favour both types of configurations and are therefore considered the primary interaction underlying the formation of these phases.

The bilayer structure of the $`A_d`$ phase suggests molecular interdigitation among adjacent sublayers such that the favoured molecular arrangements produce side-by-side antiparallel configurations of the molecular tips (Fig. 3b). These configurations could be favoured by interactions from dipole moments situated near the ends of the elongated molecules and in fact theory and simulations show that model rod-like molecules with off centre axial dipole moments can produce the $`A_d`$ phase structure . However, the amphiphilic interactions also favour this type of configurations. Moreover, this arrangement makes the packing more effective in the presence of wedge like shape asymmetry, particularly in combination with amphipilicity. This is then an example of ordering where several types of interactions could separately or cooperatively produce the polarity. In fact, Photinos and Saupe  showed nearly three decades ago the theoretical possibility of longitudinally polar smectics based on a generic molecular field description of the polar interactions.

The type of polarity described above for orthogonal smectics is similar to that of nematics in that it consists of the local (within a sublayer) breaking of the up-down symmetry $`𝐍𝐍`$ along the director and entails the same minimal asymmetry of the molecular structure, i.e. uniaxial molecules with a polar axis $`𝐦`$ of full rotational symmetry. Consequently, the polarity in each sublayer is quantified by the vector order parameter $`𝐦`$ as in uniaxial polar nematics. In the presence of longitudinal dipoles a spontaneous electric polarisation will be produced in each sublayer according to Eq. (3) and, due to the alternating polarity of the bilayer structure, the resulting “antiferroelectric” system will appear electrically a-polar on the bilayer scale. The term longitudinal will be reserved for the above type of polarity, namely the one that manifests itself as the breaking of the $`𝐍𝐍`$ symmetry along the director (coincident with the layer normal in the case of orthogonal smectics), in order to distinguish it from the transverse polarity that is manifested as the breaking of the twofold rotational symmetry about the director N.

An orthogonal smectic phase with transverse polarity and positional disorder has been reported recently  for compounds with banana-type molecular shape asymmetry. The polarity of the layers in this case is thought to result from the stacking of the molecules so that the “steric dipoles” associated with their bent shape become aligned (see Fig. 3d). This polar stacking can produce a spontaneous polarisation in the plane of the layers if the molecules possess electric dipole moments with nonvanishing component along the direction of the steric dipole. It should be noted that such electric dipole moments, if present, would contribute to the polar alignment because their configuration within each layer gives on average equal numbers of parallel side-by-side and head-to-tail pairs while the side-by-side pairs belonging to different layers are more distant and thus an overall reduction of the internal electrostatic energy relative to the a-polar system would result. In fact, unlike the case of longitudinal polarity, transverse polarity can in principle be generated by electric dipole interactions alone. Consider for example idealised smectic layers consisting of a planar arrangement of positionally disordered parallel rod–like molecules with central transverse electric dipoles (Fig. 3e). The internal electrostatic energy per molecule for the state with perfect alignment of the dipoles is lower than that of the state with randomly oriented dipoles by $`\pi (\sigma /D)\mu ^2`$, where $`\mu `$ is the dipole strength, $`\sigma `$ is the surface density of the molecules in the layers and $`D`$ is the diameter of the rods (the distance of closest approach of the dipoles, Fig 2d). The entropy per molecule for the polar state is lower than that of the random state by $`k_BT\mathrm{ln}2\pi `$ and therefore the polar state becomes the thermodynamically stable one for sufficiently large values of the quantity $`(\sigma /D)\mu ^2/k_BT`$. At this level of approximation the intra-layer electrostatic interactions do not contribute to the internal energy of the system since the interaction energy between any dipole and all the dipoles belonging to a different layer averages to zero, both in the polar and the random states. This result suggests that, to a first approximation (i.e. ignoring orientational and positional fluctuations and correlations of inter- and intra-layer molecular motions), the inter-layer electrostatic interactions are indifferent to the mode of propagation of polarity across the layers (parallel or antiparallel disposition of adjacent layers). Monte Carlo simulations of rod like molecules with transverse dipoles give some indications of in-plane polar order . Gil-Villegas, McGrother and Jackson  found that, even at fairly high densities, the dipoles in a layer self-organise to form ring domains that evolve, on lowering the temperature, into antiferroelectric elongated chain domains.

It is apparent from the examples of banana shaped molecules and of rods with transverse dipoles in Fig. 3d,e that the minimal molecular asymmetry required for in-plane phase polarity corresponds to molecules with a plane of symmetry and a twofold symmetry axis $`𝐦_T`$ on that plane. The molecular “long axis” $`𝐦`$ is defined as the axis within the plane of symmetry and perpendicular to $`𝐦_T`$ and is no longer an axis of rotational symmetry. The molecular polarity consists in the lack of $`𝐦_T𝐦_T`$ symmetry. Accordingly, phase polarity can be quantified by the vector order parameter $`𝐦_T`$. The direction of $`𝐦_T`$ defines a second director $`𝐍_T`$ in the plane of the layer and thus perpendicular to the primary director $`𝐍`$. Consequently, transverse polarity makes the orthogonal smectic phase necessarily biaxial. The asymmetry associated with in-plane polarity consists in the breaking of the $`𝐍_T𝐍_T`$ symmetry while maintaining the $`𝐍𝐍`$ symmetry. When both symmetries are valid one has a biaxial (non-polar) orthogonal phase whereas the simultaneous breaking of both symmetries yields an orthogonal smectic with both in-plane and longitudinal polarity (see Fig. 3f,g). The types of molecular interactions that can produce the combined polarity can in principle be furnished by the superposition of the interactions giving rise to the individual polarities, for example amphiphilic interactions for the longitudinal polarity and banana type steric dipole for the transverse polarity (Fig. 3f), since such interactions are not incompatible or counteracting. It thus can be seen that the consideration of the two types of polar ordering and of their combination broadens the variety of orthogonal smectics with positionally disordered layers. These possibilities of polarity are carried over and further enriched for orthogonal smectics with in-plane positional order, the discussion of which is beyond the present scope.

## IV TILTED SMECTICS

The least ordered of the tilted smectic phases is the Sm-C phase. It consists of positionally disordered layers in which the orientational order of the molecules defines a director $`𝐍`$ forming an angle (the tilt angle) with the direction normal to the layers. The Sm-C layers have a plane of symmetry (the tilt plane, formed by the layer normal Z and the director N). They also have a twofold symmetry axis $`C_2`$ perpendicular to the plane of symmetry and a centre of inversion at the intersection of the twofold axis with the symmetry plane. The directions $`𝐍`$ and $`𝐍`$ are equivalent (physically indistinguishable). However, the structure of the Sm-C phase is inherently polar since the tilt singles out a unique direction about the layer normal. This unique direction is often represented by the so-called C-director  whose direction is defined from the projection of the N-director onto the layer plane but with $`𝐂`$ and $`𝐂`$ describing physically distinct states. A particularly useful alternative  representation is provided by the tilt pseudovector t defined in terms of the layer normal Z and the N-director according to the relation

$$𝐭=(𝐙\times 𝐍)(𝐙𝐍).$$
(5)
Obviously t is perpendicular to the tilt plane, it is invariant with respect to the replacement of N by –N and the states t and –t describe layers of opposite tilt and are therefore physically distinct.

The polarity of the Sm-C phase, being clearly a direct consequence of the tilted ordering, is referred to as indigenous polarity . It is of fundamentally different nature from the polarity that could appear in orthogonal smectics or in nematics. First, when polar ordering appears in orthogonal smectics or in nematics, mirror symmetry perpendicular to the polar director (see Fig. 4a) is broken. This type of polar ordering is referred to as vector-type polarity, in accordance with the sign reversal of vectors under mirror reflection. In contrast, the indigenous polarity of the Sm-C phase is compatible with mirror symmetry in the plane normal to the direction of the polar asymmetry (the tilt plane) as illustrated in Fig. 4b. By analogy to the invariance of the direction of pseudovectors under mirror reflection, the indigenous polarity of the Sm-C layers can then be termed as pseudovector-type.

In order to quantify the indigenous pseudovector polarity of the Sm-C layers and to illustrate its molecular origins we consider an idealised molecular model embodying the minimal asymmetry required for the appearance of tilted orientational ordering and positional disorder within the layers. For simplicity we consider a rigid molecule whose shape has the same symmetries as the Sm-C phase (equivalently, the minimal asymmetry compatible with the Sm-C phase). A convenient example is the oblique cylinder of Fig. 5a. It has a plane of symmetry, a twofold axis and an inversion centre. Objects of this shape have been used as molecular models in a theory of the Sm-C phase by Somoza and Tarazona . In the present context they are used merely in order to convey the molecular symmetry by means of simple images.

Let the vectors s and $`𝐬^{}`$ be directed along the cylinder axis and normal to the oblique surfaces respectively. The two halves on either side of the symmetry plane of the molecule (the two “faces” of the molecule, for brevity) are distinct mirror images of each other. The pseudovector $`𝐚=𝐬\times 𝐬^{}`$ can then be used for the distinction between the two faces. In the Sm-A phase there is clearly nothing to make any given orientation of $`𝐚`$ have a different probability from its opposite (Fig. 5 b) whereas the tilted ordering of the Sm-C phase induces a preference of one of the two opposite orientations perpendicular to the tilt plane over the other (Fig. 5c). This preference gives rise to a nonvanishing value of the ensemble average $`𝐚`$ and allows the definition of the (pseudovector) order parameter $`𝐏_𝐈=𝐚/\left|𝐚\right|`$ that quantifies the indigenous polarity. Clearly, the indigenous polarity is not related to chirality. This is depicted in Fig. 4b where it is apparent that the presence of pseudovector $`𝐏_𝐈`$ does not differentiate a layer from its mirror image. However, if the indigenously polar Sm-C phase is to exhibit spontaneous electric polarisation, it is necessity that the molecules possess an electric dipole moment with a nonvanishing component along $`𝐚`$. In that case the indigenous polarity $`𝐏_𝐈`$ will generate a spontaneous electric polarisation $`𝐏_s^e`$ normal to the tilt plane according to the relation

$$𝐏_s^e=𝒩𝝁=𝒩𝝁_{}^{}𝐏_𝐈,$$
(6)
where $`\mu _{}^{}=𝝁𝐚/\left|𝐚\right|`$ is a pseudoscalar measure of the strength of what is often referred to as the “transverse dipole moment”. It is obvious, however, that the attachment of a transverse dipole component to the molecules (see Fig. 5a) destroys the mirror plane symmetry of their structure, which thus becomes chiral. In this sense, the molecular parameter $`\mu _{}^{}`$ provides a measure of the electrostatic chirality of the molecular structure. The electrically polar layer is no longer identical to its mirror image (see Fig. 4c), i.e. the layers have become electrostatically chiral.

According to the above considerations, the relevance of vector and pseudovector polarity to spontaneous polarisation can be summarised by stating that vector polarity is not necessarily present and, when present, can give rise to spontaneous polarisation even if the molecules are not chiral whereas pseudovector polarity is necessarily present in all tilted smectics but can give rise to electric spontaneous polarisation only if the molecules are chiral. This difference is born by equations (3) and (6), which are formally identical but the two different mechanisms by which $`𝐏_s^e`$ is generated are explicitly reflected on

(i) the different physical significance of the molecular quantities $`\mu _{}`$ (scalar measure of longitudinal dipole) and $`\mu _{}^{}`$ (pseudoscalar measure of chirality-related transverse dipole) and

(ii) the molecular order parameters $`𝐦`$ and $`𝐏_𝐈`$ quantifying respectively the direct (vector) polarity and the indigenous, tilt-generated, pseudovector polarity.

Having used an explicit molecular idealisation (Fig. 5) to illustrate the significance of the (pseudovector) indigenous polarity, its role in giving rise to spontaneous electric polarisation in tilted smectics, its differentiation from the latter polarisation and from the (vector) polarity appearing in orthogonal smectics and nematics, it is useful to give a generalised description of the above in terms of molecular and phase symmetry: The Sm-C layers have $`C_{2h}`$ symmetry. The plane of symmetry is identified with the tilt plane and the twofold symmetry axis $`C_2`$ is perpendicular to that plane. As a result of the rotational symmetry about this axis, the projection of any vector or pseudovector order parameter onto the tilt plane necessarily vanishes. Furthermore, the plane of symmetry makes all vector order parameter components along the $`C_2`$ axis vanish but allows the appearance of pseudovector components along that axis. To exclude the possibility of such pseudovector components would require at least one symmetry axis in the tilt plane, but such symmetry axis is of course precluded by the monoclinic symmetry of the tilted layers. Hence, tilt generates pseudovector indigenous polarity $`𝐏_𝐈`$ along the $`C_2`$axis of the Sm-C layers. To identify the molecular origin of this polarity it is necessary to consider molecular symmetry. To this end, it is sufficient to consider molecules that are not less symmetric (in the statistical sense, when referring to rigid molecules) than the phase itself, i.e molecules with $`C_{2h}`$ symmetry. Again, the existence of a plane of symmetry together with the lack of any symmetry axes on that plane makes it possible to define only molecular pseudovectors directed perpendicular to the plane of symmetry, i.e. along the molecular $`C_2`$ axis. The ensemble average of the projection of such a pseudovector of unit length along the $`C_2`$ axis of the layers defines the order parameter $`𝐏_𝐈`$. The presence of the molecular $`C_2`$ axis is not essential to these considerations; only the molecular plane of symmetry is necessary in order to exclude molecular chirality. Now, if chirality is allowed for in the smectic layers then there will be no symmetry plane. The chiral analogue of the smectc-C phase, the Sm-C\*, has only one $`C_2`$ axis. This precludes the appearance of any vector or pseudovector order parameter components in the tilt plane (defined as the plane perpendicular to the $`C_2`$ axis, but no longer a symmetry plane). It allows, however, the appearance of both vector and pseudovector components in the $`C_2`$ direction. This leads to the possibility of simultaneous (pseudovector) indigenous polarity and (vector) spontaneous polarisation in chiral tilted smectics.

Combinations of pseudovector polarity with the vector polarity described in the previous section for orthogonal smectics are possible and generate several polar variants of the Sm-C phase. Thus, longitudinal vector polarity is present, in addition to indigenous pseudovector polarity, in the tilted analogues Sm-C<sub>2</sub>, Sm-C<sub>d</sub> and Sm-$`\stackrel{~}{C}`$ (Fig. 6 a,b,c) of the orthogonal bilayer variants of the Sm-A. The tilted sublayers in these phases are polar along the director, i.e. have broken $`𝐍𝐍`$ symmetry, and are therefore lacking the twofold symmetry axis (normal to the tilt plane) of the common Sm-C layers. However, this symmetry is restored in the bilayers due to the opposite longitudinal polarity $`𝐦`$ of their constituent sublayers. As in the case of orthogonal smectics, these sublayers could exhibit spontaneous electric polarisation $`𝐏_s^e`$ along the director (consequently in the tilt plane and tilted with respect to the layer normal). For chiral molecules with transverse dipole moments this component of $`𝐏_s^e`$ would be superposed to the component (perpendicular to the tilt plane) associated with the indigenous polarity and thus the total $`𝐏_s^e`$ in each sublayer would be in the plane containing the director $`𝐍`$ and the tilt pseudovector $`𝐭`$.

Transverse vector polarity can be combined with indigenous pseudovector polarity in many ways and results in the various banana-type tilted smectics. Thus, the vector order parameter $`𝐦_T`$ can be in the tilt plane (therefore perpendicular to the direction of the indigenous polarity $`𝐏_𝐈)`$, resulting in the layer structure of the $`C_{B1}`$ phase (Fig. 6d), or it can be perpendicular to the tilt plane (therefore parallel to $`𝐏_𝐈)`$, resulting in $`C_{B2}`$ layers Fig. 6e, or it could be in any intermediate direction (within the plane perpendicular to the director and to the tilt plane) resulting in $`C_G`$ layers . Finally, the possible polymorphism of polar tilted smectics could be further enriched by combining the indigenous pseudovector polarity $`𝐏_𝐈`$, simultaneously with the transverse, $`𝐦_T`$, and the longitudinal, $`𝐦`$, vector-type polarities (Fig. 6f, g).

## V POLARITY IN COLUMNAR PHASES

Polar ordering, both of the vector and pseudovector type, is possible in columnar liquid crystals . By analogy to smectic layers, the columns in orthogonal columnar phases can exhibit longitudinal vector polarity, with the order parameter $`𝐦`$ directed along the column axis (Fig. 7a, b), or transverse vector polarity, with the vector order parameter $`𝐦_T`$ directed perpendicular to the column axis (Fig. 7c). For flat plate-like molecules, the longitudinal polarity can be generated by polar intermolecular interactions along the plate axis (Fig. 7a), including electric dipole interactions . The latter possibility obtains because, as shown in Fig. 1c, the dipoles in head-to-tail configuration are separated by the “thin” dimension of the plate and thus the energy of that configuration becomes much lower than that of side-by-side. For bowl-shaped molecules (Fig. 7b), their polar ordering in each column is driven by their shape-dictated directional stacking.

Transverse polarity can be generated in columns by amphiphilic interactions resulting from the partitioning of the plate into sectors of different philicity as shown in Fig. 7c. In this case the up-down symmetry of the column is maintained but the rotational symmetry about the column axis is lost and the thus columns, by becoming transversely polar, become inevitably biaxial.

Columns exhibiting both longitudinal and transverse polarity have neither up-down symmetry nor rotational symmetry about the column axis and could be generated by combining the interactions corresponding to Fig. 7a or 7b with those of Fig. 7c, or, for example, by off-centre polar interactions directed across the plates, as shown in Fig. 7d.

In tilted columnar phases  the director $`𝐍`$, i.e. the direction of alignment of the molecular plate-normals, does not coincide with the direction $`𝐙`$ of the axis of the column. These two distinct directions define the tilt plane of the column. The respective tilt pseudovector $`𝐭`$ is defined in terms of $`𝐍`$ and $`𝐙`$ as in Eq. (6). The tilted ordering of the columns inflicts a pseudovector type polarity on the structure. The molecular origin of the indigenous pseudovector polarity for tilted columnar liquid crystals can be illustrated in close analogy with that of tilted smectics  by considering idealised molecules of oblique disc shape as in Fig. 8a. The two molecular vectors $`𝐬`$ and $`𝐬^{}`$ define a pseudovector $`𝐚=𝐬\times 𝐬^{}`$ whose direction differentiates between the two mirror image halves, or “faces”, of the oblique disc and whose ensemble average $`𝐚`$ in the tilted column defines the indigenous polarity order parameter $`𝐏_𝐈=𝐚/\left|𝐚\right|`$ (Fig 8c). The asymmetry is removed in an orthogonal column (Fig. 8b) making $`𝐚=0`$. The direction of $`𝐏_𝐈`$ is along the tilt pseudovector $`𝐭`$, i.e. perpendicular to the tilt plane of the column, and is therefore compatible with the two-fold rotational symmetry about $`𝐭`$. Moreover, the pseudovector character of $`𝐏_𝐈`$ makes it compatible with the mirror plane symmetry of the tilted columns. As in the case of tilted smectics, pseudovector polarity in tilted columnars can be combined with longitudinal vector polarity (along the director) or with transverse vector polarity, or with both, to provide polar columns in which either the mirror plane symmetry or the twofold rotation symmetry or both symmetries are broken.

## VI CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION

Strictly, none of the known low molar mass liquid crystals exhibit, in their thermodynamically equilibrated bulk state, spontaneous macroscopic polarisation, electric or magnetic. The repetitive building blocks (layers, columns, etc) of phases with partial positional order are often polar but arranged in polarity neutralising patterns (bilayer, antiferroelectric, helical, etc) to produce macroscopically a-polar phases. In this paper we have considered the different types of polar self-assembly of the building blocks, we have quantified the resulting polar ordering in terms of molecular order parameters and we have identified the underlying molecular symmetries and intermolecular interactions.

Vector-type and pseudovector-type polarity refer to two distinct asymmetries of molecular ordering. Vector type applies when there is no plane of symmetry and no symmetry axis perpendicular to the direction of polarity. Pseudovector-type applies when there is no symmetry axis perpendicular to the direction of polarity but there is a plane of symmetry. Vector polarity is theoretically possible for nematics but requires interactions of rather unusual position-orientation dependence. In contrast, amphiphilic, steric and electrostatic dipole interactions can, separately or cooperatively, give rise to vector polarity in the repetitive units of smectic and columnar phases. The polarity in these cases could appear along the primary direction of alignment (longitudinal) or in a direction perpendicular to it (transverse) or both. Pseudovector polarity is produced by the tilted molecular arrangement in all a-chiral tilted smectic and columnar phases. It is driven by the same interactions that give rise to the tilted ordering and reflects the asymmetry imposed on the molecular orientations by the packing constraints.

Introducing polarity, with its different types and combinations, to the common a-polar modes of molecular self-organisation enriches the polymorphism of mesophases with many polar variants. A good understanding of the molecular asymmetries and interactions that favour particular types of polar ordering is certainly essential to the design of such materials. However, in addition to these qualitative assessments, quantitative estimates could be crucial to the successful design. This is so because the thermodynamic stability of mesophases usually rests on a delicate balance between order-promoting interactions that are counteracted by entropy lowering. Therefore, the interactions need to be strong enough to produce the required molecular correlations but not so strong as to destabilise liquid crystallinity in favour of a solid phase. At present, theory and computer simulations could provide useful quantitative input but there are also many complications in obtaining realistic estimates. For example, almost all liquid crystal forming molecules are flexible. For qualitative considerations molecular symmetry is understood to refer to the “conformationally averaged” molecule and so are the intermolecular interactions. In a quantitative treatment, however, the individual molecular conformations (normally lacking any element of symmetry) have to be considered together with the detailed interactions of the various molecular segments. This usually introduces an enormous number of degrees of freedom. Assuming that the latter can be handled computationally, the predictive quality of the results rests on the detailed modelling of the intra- and inter-molecular interactions. A reasonably realistic modelling of interactions in liquid crystals is in general very difficult due to the subtlety of these interactions. For example, interactions associated with partial charge distributions are routinely modelled in terms of fixed electric dipole moments, quadrupole moments etc. This kind of crude modelling does not allow for the possibly significant deformations of the charge distribution caused by intermolecular interactions (polarisability). It also disregards the fact that the multipole expansion of a charge distribution is valid only at distances that are large compared to the spatial extent of the distribution. As a result the respective quantitative predictions would be at best indicative of the possible behaviour of the real system.

## Acknowledgements

This paper is dedicated to the memory of Pier Luigi Nordio.

Partial financial support for this work came from the EU TMR (contract FMRX-CT97-0121) and through the funding of the Polymer Science and Technology Graduate Studies Programme of the University of Patras.


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# The origin of the first and third generation fermion masses in a technicolor scenario

## 1 Introduction

The standard model is in excellent agreement with the experimental data. The only still obscure part of the model is the one responsible for the mass generation, i.e. the Higgs mechanism. In order to make the mass generation mechanism more natural there are several alternatives, where the most popular ones are supersymmetry and technicolor. In the first one the mass generation occurs through the existence of non-trivial vacuum expectation values of fundamental scalar bosons while in the second case the bosons responsible for the breaking of gauge and chiral symmetry are composite. Up to now the fermionic mass spectrum is the strongest hint that we have in order to unravel the symmetry breaking mechanism. A simple and interesting way to describe the fermionic mass spectrum is to suppose that the mechanism behind mass generation is able to produce a non-diagonal mass matrix with the Fritzsch texture fritzsch

$`M_f=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0& A& 0\\ A^{}& 0& B\\ 0& B^{}& C\end{array}\right).`$ (4)
This matrix is similar for the charged leptons, $`1/3`$ and $`2/3`$ charged quarks. The entry $`C`$ is proportional to the mass of the third generation fermion, while the entry $`A`$ is proportional to the mass of the lighter first generation. The diagonalization of such mass matrix will determine the CKM mixing angles and the resulting diagonal mass matrix should reproduce the observed current fermion masses. There are other possible patterns for the mass matrix and we choose the one of Eq.(4) just for simplicity. We call attention to the values of $`A`$ and $`C`$. They must be of order of a few MeV and a hundred GeV respectively. In models with a fundamental Higgs boson the values of $`A`$ and $`C`$ are obtained due to adjusted vacuum expectation values (vev) or Yukawa couplings. In this way there is no natural explanation for the values of $`A`$ and $`C`$; they appear just as an ad hoc choice of couplings! The question that we would like to discuss here is how we naturally can generate the scales $`A`$ and $`C`$? In order to do so let us recall which are the mass scales in the standard model. In this model we have basically two natural mass scales: $`\mu _{qcd}250`$ MeV, which is the quantum chromodynamics (qcd) dynamical quark mass scale and $`v250`$ GeV, the vacuum expectation value of the fundamental Higgs field responsible for the gauge symmetry breaking. As qcd is already an example of a theory with dynamical symmetry breaking we will also assume that technicolor (tc) models provide a more natural way to explain the gauge symmetry breaking weisus ; hillsi , i.e. at this level all the symmetry breaking mechanisms should be dynamical. Therefore we will not discuss about a fundamental scalar field with vev $`v`$ but of a composite scalar field characterized by $`\mu _{tc}250`$ GeV, which is the scale of the dynamical techniquark mass. Of course, at very high energies we possibly have other natural mass scales as the Planck one, a grand unified theory (gut) scale $`M_{gut}`$ or a horizontal (family) symmetry mass scale $`M_h`$, although it is far from clear how such scales interfere with the values of $`A`$ and $`C`$. Finally, in tc models we may also have the extended technicolor (etc) mass scale $`M_{etc}`$ dim  upon which no constraint can be established above the $`1`$ TeV scale will . In this work we will build a model where the scales $`A`$ and $`C`$ of Eq.(4) can be related respectively to the scales $`\mu _{qcd}`$ and $`\mu _{tc}`$ times some small coupling constant. The values of Eq.(4) will depend the least as possible on the very high energy mass scales like $`M_{gut}`$, $`M_{etc}`$, etc … The model will require a very peculiar dynamics for the tc theory as well as for qcd, and this peculiarity in what concerns qcd differs the present approach from any other that may be found in the literature. In the next section we discuss which is the dynamics of non-Abelian theories that will lead to the desired relation between $`A(C)`$ and $`\mu _{qcd}(\mu _{tc})`$. In Section III we introduce a model assuming that its strongly interacting sector has the properties described in the previous section, and show that the intermediate mass scale ($`B`$) of Eq.(4) appears naturally in such a scheme. In Section IV we compute the fermion mass matrix. Section V contain some brief comments about the pseudo goldstone bosons that appear in our model and we draw our conclusions in the last section.

## 2 The self-energy of quarks and techniquarks

In tc models the ordinary fermion mass is generated through the diagram shown in Fig.(1). In Fig.(1) the boson indicated by $`SU(k)`$ corresponds to the exchange of a non-Abelian boson, with coupling $`\alpha _k`$ to fermions ($`f`$) or technifermions ($`T`$). In the models found in the literature the role of the $`SU(k)`$ group is performed by the extended technicolor group and the boson mass is given by $`M_{etc}`$

To perform the calculation of Fig.(1) we can use the following general expression for the techniquark (or quark) self-energy dn

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }(p)_g=\mu \left(\frac{\mu ^2}{p^2}\right)^\theta [1+bg_{tc(qcd)}^2(\mu ^2)ln(p^2/\mu ^2)],^{\gamma \mathrm{cos}(\theta \pi )}$$
(5)
where in the last equation we identified $`\gamma =\gamma _{tc(qcd)}`$ as the canonical anomalous dimension of the tc(qcd) mass operator, and $`\mu `$ is the dynamical fermion (tc or qcd) mass. The advantage of using such expression is that it interpolates between the extreme possibilities for the technifermion (or quark) self-energy, i.e. when $`\theta =1`$ we have the soft self-energy giving by

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_s(p)=\frac{\mu ^3}{p^2}[1+bg_{tc(qcd)}^2(\mu ^2)ln(p^2/\mu ^2)]^\gamma ,$$
(6)
which is the one obtained when the composite operator $`\overline{\psi _i}\psi _i\mu _i^3`$ has canonical dimension and where $`i`$ can indicate $`tc`$ or $`qcd`$. When $`\theta =0`$ operators of higher dimension may lead to the hard self-energy expression

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_h(p)=\mu [1+bg_{tc(qcd)}^2(\mu ^2)ln(p^2/\mu ^2)]^\gamma ,$$
(7)
where $`\gamma `$ must be larger than $`1/2`$ and the self-energy behaves like a bare mass kl . Therefore no matter is the dimensionality of the operators responsible for the mass generation in technicolor theories the self-energy can always be described by Eq.(5). In the above equations $`g_{tc(qcd)}`$ is the technicolor(qcd) coupling constant and $`\gamma =\frac{3c_{tc(qcd)}}{16\pi ^2b}`$, where $`c_{tc(qcd)}=\frac{1}{2}[C_2(R_1)+C_2(R_2)C_2(R_{\overline{\psi }\psi })]`$ , with the quadratic Casimir operators $`C_2(R_1)`$ and $`C_2(R_2)`$ associated to the $`R.H`$ and $`L.H`$ fermionic representations of the technicolor(qcd) group, and $`C_2(R_{\overline{\psi }\psi })`$ is related to the condensate representation. $`b`$ is the $`g_{tc(qcd)}^3`$ coefficient of the technicolor(qcd) group $`\beta `$ function. The complete equation for the dynamical fermion mass displayed in Fig.(1) is

$$m_f=a_k𝑑q^4\left(\frac{\mu ^2}{q^2}\right)^\theta \frac{g_k^2(q)[1+b_{tc(qcd)}g_{tc(qcd)}^2ln(\frac{q^2}{\mu ^2})]^\delta }{(q^2+M_k^2)(q^2+\mu _{tc(qcd)}^2)},$$
(8)
where we define $`a_k=\frac{3C_{2k}\mu _{tc(qcd)}}{16\pi ^4}`$. In the last equation $`C_{2k}`$ is the Casimir operator related to the fermionic representations of the $`SU(k)`$ (or etc) group connecting the different fermions (tc or qcd), $`g_k`$ and $`M_k`$ are the respective coupling constant and gauge boson mass, a factor $`\mu _{tc(qcd)}`$ remained in the fermion propagator as a natural infrared regulator and $`\delta =\gamma \mathrm{cos}\theta \pi `$, $`g_k^2(q)`$ is assumed to be giving by

$$g_k^2(q^2)\frac{g_k^2(M_k^2)}{(1+b_kg_k^2(M_k^2)ln(\frac{q^2}{M_k^2}))}.$$
(9)
Note that in Eq.(8) we have two terms of the form $`[1+b_ig_i^2lnq^2]`$ where the index $`i`$ can be related to tc(qcd) or $`SU(k)`$. To obtain an analytical formula for the fermion mass we will consider the substitution $`q^2\frac{xM_k^2}{\mu _i^2}`$, and we will assume that $`b_kg_k^2(M_k)b_{tc(qcd)}g_{tc(qcd)}^2(M_k)`$ , what will simplify considerably the calculation. Knowing that the $`SU(k)`$ group usually is larger than the tc(qcd) one, we computed numerically the error in this approximation for few examples found in the literature. The resulting expression for $`m_f`$ will be overestimated by a factor $`1.11.3`$ and is giving by

$$m_f\frac{3C_{2k}g_k^2(M_k)\mu }{16\pi ^2}\left(\frac{\mu ^2}{M_k^2}\right)^\theta \left[1+b_{tc(qcd)}g_{tc(qcd)}^2ln\frac{M_k^2}{\mu ^2}\right]^\delta I,$$
(10)
where

$$I=\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\sigma )}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\sigma \sigma ^{ϵ1}e^\sigma \frac{1}{\theta +\rho \sigma }.$$

with $`\rho =b_{tc(qcd)}g_{tc(qcd)}^2(M_k)`$ and $`ϵ=\delta +1=\gamma cos\theta \pi +1`$. To obtain Eq.(10) we made use of the following Mellin transform

$$\left[1+\kappa \mathrm{ln}\frac{x}{\mu ^2}\right]^ϵ=\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(ϵ)}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\sigma e^\sigma \left(\frac{x}{\mu ^2}\right)^{\sigma \kappa }\sigma ^{ϵ1}.$$
(11)
Finally, we obtain

$$m_f\frac{3C_{2k}g_k^2(M_{etc})\mu }{16\pi ^2}\left(\frac{\mu ^2}{M_{etc}^2}\right)^\theta F(\mathrm{cos}\theta \pi ,\gamma ,\rho ).$$
(12)
where

$`F(\mathrm{cos}\theta \pi ,\gamma ,\rho )=`$ $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\gamma \mathrm{cos}(\theta \pi ),{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{\rho }})\mathrm{exp}({\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{\rho }}){\displaystyle \frac{1}{\rho }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{\rho }}\right)^{\gamma \mathrm{cos}(\theta \pi )}`$
$`\left[1+b_{tc(qcd)}g_{tc(qcd)}^2ln{\displaystyle \frac{M_k^2}{\mu ^2}}\right]^{\gamma \mathrm{cos}(\theta \pi )}.`$
Simple inspection of the above equations shows that $`\theta =0`$ lead us to the relation that we are looking for i.e.

$$Cg_k^2\mu _{tc},$$
(13)
which give masses of $`O(GeV)`$. If the $`SU(k)`$ (or etc) bosons connect quarks to other ordinary fermions we also have

$$Ag_k^2\mu _{qcd},$$
(14)
which are masses of a few $`MeV`$. To obtain Eqs.(13) and (14) we neglected the logarithmic term that appears in Eq.(12). In principle there is no problem to assume the existence of a tc dynamical self-energy with $`\theta =0`$. There are tc models where it has been assumed that the self-energy is dominated by higher order interactions that are relavant at or above the tc scale leading naturally to a very hard dynamics carpenter ; soni . The existence of a hard self-energy in qcd is the unusual ingredient that we are introducing here. Usually it is assumed that such solution is not allowed due to a standard operator product expansion (OPE) argument politzer . This argument does not hold if there are higher order interactions in the theory or a nontrivial fixed point of the qcd (or tc) $`\beta `$ function holdom . There are many pros and cons in this problem which we will not repeat here lqcd , but we just argue that several recent calculations of the infrared qcd (or any non-Abelian theory) are showing the existence of an IR fixed point alkofer  and the existence of a gluon (or technigluon) mass scale which naturally leads to an IR fixed point ans . The existence of such a mass scale seems to modify the structure of chiral symmetry breaking mns . This fact is not the only one that may lead to a failure of the standard OPE argument. For instance, the effect of dimension two gluon condensates, if they exist, dim2  can also modify the dynamics of chiral symmetry breaking and this possibility has not been investigated up to now. Therefore it seems that we still do not have a full understanding of the IR behavior of the non-Abelian theories, which can modify the behavior of the self-energies that we are dealing with. According to this we will just assume that such behavior can happen in tc as well as in qcd. How much this is a bad or good assumption it will be certainly reflected in the fermionic spectrum that we shall obtain. Finally, this is our only working hypothesis and will lead us to the following problem: How can we prevent the coupling of the first and second fermionic generations to the technifermions? A model along this line is proposed in the next section.

## 3 The model

### 3.1 The fermionic content and couplings

According to the dynamics that we proposed in the previous section, which consists in a self-energy with $`\theta =0`$ in Eq.(5), and as the different fermion masses will be generated due to the interaction with different strong forces, we must introduce a horizontal (or family) symmetry to prevent the first and second generation ordinary fermions to couple to technifermions at leading order. The lighter generations will couple only to the qcd condensate or only at higher loop order in the case of the tc condensate. Using the hard expression for the self-energy (Eq.(7)) the fermion masses will depend only logarithmically on the masses of the gauge bosons connecting ordinary fermions to technifermions. Therefore we may choose a scale for these interactions of the order of a gut scale, without the introduction of large changes in the value of the fermion masses. We stress again that the only hypothesis introduced up to now is the dynamics described in the previous section. On the other hand, as we shall see in the sequence, we will substitute the need of an extended technicolor group by the existence of a quite expected unified theory containing tc and the standard model (SM) at a gut scale. There is also another advantage in our scheme: It will be quite independent of the physics at this “unification” scale and will require only a symmetry (horizontal) preventing the leading order coupling of the light fermion generations to technifermions. Finally, the horizontal symmetry will be a local one, although we expect that a global symmetry will also lead to the same results. We consider a unified theory based on the $`SU(9)`$ gauge group, containing a $`SU(4)_{tc}`$ tc group (stronger than qcd) and the standard model, with the following anomaly free fermionic representations ref1

$$5[9,8]1[9,2]$$
(15)
where the $`[\underset{¯}{8}]`$ and $`[\underset{¯}{2}]`$ are antisymmetric under $`SU(9)`$. Therefore the fermionic content of these representations can be decomposed according to the group product $`SU(4)_{tc}SU(5)_{gg}`$ ($`SU(5)_{gg}`$ is the standard Georgi-Glashow gut gg ) as:

$`[\mathrm{𝟗},\mathrm{𝟐}]`$
$`(1,10)=\left(\begin{array}{ccccc}0& \overline{u_i}_B& \overline{u_i}_Y& u_{i}^{}{}_{R}{}^{}& d_{i}^{}{}_{R}{}^{}\\ \overline{u_i}_B& 0& \overline{u_i}_R& u_{i}^{}{}_{Y}{}^{}& d_{i}^{}{}_{Y}{}^{}\\ \overline{u_i}_Y& \overline{u_i}_R& 0& u_{i}^{}{}_{B}{}^{}& d_{i}^{}{}_{B}{}^{}\\ u_{i}^{}{}_{R}{}^{}& u_{i}^{}{}_{Y}{}^{}& u_{i}^{}{}_{B}{}^{}& 0& \overline{e_i}\\ d_{i}^{}{}_{R}{}^{}& d_{i}^{}{}_{Y}{}^{}& d_{i}^{}{}_{B}{}^{}& \overline{e_i}& 0\end{array}\right)`$ (21)
$`(4,5)=\left(\begin{array}{c}Q_{i}^{}{}_{R}{}^{}\\ Q_{i}^{}{}_{Y}{}^{}\\ Q_{i}^{}{}_{B}{}^{}\\ \overline{L_i}\\ \overline{N_i}\end{array}\right)_{TC},(\overline{6},1)=N_i`$ (27)
$`[\mathrm{𝟗},\mathrm{𝟖}]`$
$`(1,\overline{5})=\left(\begin{array}{c}\overline{d_i}_R\\ \overline{d_i}_Y\\ \overline{d_i}_B\\ e_i\\ \nu _{e_i}\end{array}\right),(1,\overline{5})=\left(\begin{array}{c}\overline{X}_{R_k}\\ \overline{X}_{Y_k}\\ \overline{X}_{B_k}\\ E_k\\ N_{E_k}\end{array}\right)_i`$ (38)
$`(\overline{4},1)=\overline{Q_i}_\epsilon ,L_i,N_{i}^{}{}_{L}{}^{},`$
where $`\epsilon =\mathrm{1..3}`$ is a color index and $`k=\mathrm{1..4}`$ indicates the generation number of exotic fermions that must be introduced in order to render the model anomaly free. These fermions will acquire masses of the order of the grand unified scale. We are also indicating a generation (or horizontal) index $`i=\mathrm{1..3}`$, that will appear due to the necessary replication of families associated to a $`SU(3)_H`$ horizontal group. This model is a variation of a model proposed by one of us many years ago natale . The mass matrix of Eq.(4) will be formed according to the representations of the strongly interacting fermions of the theory under the $`SU(3)_H`$ group. The technifermions form a quartet under $`SU(4)_{tc}`$ and the quarks are triplets of qcd. The technicolor and color condensates will be formed at the scales $`\mu _{tc}`$ and $`\mu _{qcd}`$ in the most attractive channel (mac) suscor  of the products $`\overline{\mathrm{𝟒}}\mathrm{𝟒}`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{𝟑}}\mathrm{𝟑}`$ of each strongly interacting theory. We assign the horizontal quantum numbers to technifermions and quarks such that these same products can be decomposed in the following representations of $`SU(3)_H`$: $`\overline{\mathrm{𝟔}}`$ in the case of the technicolor condensate, and $`\mathrm{𝟑}`$ in the case of the qcd condensate. For this it is enough that the standard left-handed (right-handed) fermions transform as triplets (antitriplets) under $`SU(3)_H`$, assuming that the tc and qcd condensates are formed in the $`\overline{\mathrm{𝟔}}`$ and in the $`\mathrm{𝟑}`$ of the $`SU(3)_H`$ group. This is consistent with the mac hypothesis suscor  although a complete analysis of this problem is out of the scope of this work. The above choice for the condensation channels is crucial for our model, because the tc condensate in the representation $`\overline{\mathrm{𝟔}}`$ (of $`SU(3)_H`$) will interact only with the third fermionic generation while the $`\mathrm{𝟑}`$ (the qcd condensate) will interact only with the first generation. In this way we can generate the coefficients $`C`$ and $`A`$ respectively of Eq.(4), because when we add these condensates (vevs) and write them as a $`3\times 3`$ matrix we will end up (at leading order) with

$`M_f=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0& A& 0\\ A^{}& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& C\end{array}\right).`$ (42)
This problem is very similar to the one proposed by Berezhiani and Gelmini et al. ref3  where the vevs of fundamental scalars are substituted by condensates. The new couplings generated by the unified $`SU(9)`$ group and by the horizontal symmetry $`SU(3)_H`$ are shown in Fig.(2).

With the couplings shown in Fig.(2) we can determine the diagrams that are going to contribute to the $`2/3`$ and $`1/3`$ charged quark masses as well as to the charged lepton masses. These diagrams are respectively shown in Fig.(3) to (5). It is important to observe the following in the above figures: The second generation fermions obtain masses only at a two loop order. This mass will be proportional to $`\mu _{tc}`$ times two small couplings ($`g_h`$ and $`g_9`$, respectively the $`SU(3)_H`$ and $`SU(9)`$ coupling constants). It will also be nondiagonal in the $`SU(3)_H`$ indices. The first generation fermions obtain masses only due to the qcd condensate whereas the third generation ones couple directly to the tc condensates. Due to the particular choice of representations under the unified theory containing tc and the standard model we end up with more than one mass diagram for several fermions. It is particularly interesting the way the fermions of the first generation obtain masses. In some of the diagrams of the above figures we show a boson that is indicated by $`SU(5)`$. This boson belongs to the $`SU(9)`$ group, but would also appear in the standard $`SU(5)_{gg}`$ gut. For example, the electron only couples to the $`d`$ quark (and to the qcd condensate) through a $`SU(5)_{gg}`$ gauge boson existent in the Georgi-Glashow minimal gut, whereas the $`u`$ and $`d`$ can connect to the second generation through the horizontal symmetry gauge bosons. We also expect other diagrams at higher order in $`g_h`$ and/or $`g_9`$ that are not drawn in these figures.

### 3.2 The composite Higgs system

We can also observe that the second generation fermions will be massive not looking at the diagrams of Fig.(3) to (5), but studying the composite Higgs system. With this we mean that the qcd and tc condensates act as if we had two composite bosons represented by the fields $`\eta `$ and $`\phi `$. In principle this system could be described by the following effective potential

$$V(\eta ,\phi )=\mu _\eta ^2\eta ^{}\eta +\lambda _\eta (\eta ^{}\eta )^2+\mu _\phi ^2\phi ^{}\phi +\lambda _\phi (\phi ^{}\phi )^2,$$
(43)
in such a way that we can identify the vevs (given by the ratio of masses and couplings)

$$v_\eta ^2=\frac{\mu _\eta ^2}{\lambda _\eta },v_\phi ^2=\frac{\mu _\phi ^2}{\lambda _\phi },$$
(44)
to the qcd and tc vacuum condensates. The bosons represented by $`\eta `$ and $`\phi `$, respectively, are related to the system of composite Higgs bosons formed in the representations $`\mathrm{𝟑}`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{𝟔}}`$ of the horizontal group. Such supposition is quite plausible if we consider the results of Ref.carpenter ; soni , where it was shown that the interactions of a composite Higgs boson is very similar to the ones of a fundamental boson. Our intention is to show that such system leads to an intermediate mass scale and to a mass matrix identical to Eq.(4).

The vevs of qcd and technicolor, due to the horizontal symmetry, can be written respectively in the following form ref3

$$\eta \left(\begin{array}{c}0\\ 0\\ v_\eta \end{array}\right),\phi \left(\begin{array}{ccc}0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& v_\phi \end{array}\right),$$
(45)
and will be of the order of $`250`$ MeV and $`250`$ GeV. It is instructive at this point to observe what fermionic mass matrix we can obtain with the vevs of Eq.(45). We can assume that the composite scalars $`\eta `$ and $`\phi `$ have ordinary Yukawa couplings fritzsch ; ref3  to fermions described by the following effective Yukawa lagrangian

$$_Y=a\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_{L\lambda }^i\eta _\lambda ^kU_R^jϵ_{ijk}+b\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_{L\lambda }^i\phi ^{ij}U_R^j,$$
(46)
where $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ and $`U`$ are the ordinary fermion fields. $`\lambda `$ is a weak hypercharge ($`SU(2)_w`$) index, for instance, $`\lambda =1`$ represents charge $`2/3`$ quarks and $`\lambda =2`$ correspond to the charge $`1/3`$ quarks, $`i,j`$ e $`k`$ indicate the components of the composite scalar bosons of the representations $`\mathrm{𝟑}`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{𝟔}}`$ of $`SU(3)_H`$ and $`a`$ and $`b`$ are the coupling constants. Substituting the vevs of Eq.(45) in the Yukawa lagrangian for the charge $`2/3`$ quarks, we obtain

$$_Y=a\overline{c}_Lv_\eta u_Ra\overline{u}_Lv_\eta c_R+b\overline{t}_Lv_\phi t_R,$$
(47)
leading to a mass matrix in the $`(u,c,t)`$ basis which is given by

$$\overline{m}^{\frac{2}{3}}=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0& av_\eta & 0\\ av_\eta & 0& 0\\ 0& 0& bv_\phi \end{array}\right).$$
(48)
The main point of the model is that the fermions of the third generation obtain large masses because they couple directly to technifermions, while the ones of the first generation obtain masses originated by the ordinary condensation of qcd quarks. Having this picture on mind we can now see that the most general vev for this system includes the mass generation for the intermediate family.

It is important to verify that there is no way to prevent the coupling at higher order of the different composite scalar bosons with $`SU(3)_H`$ quantum numbers. Examples of such couplings are shown in Fig.(6)

The diagrams of Fig.(6) will produce new terms for the effective potential of our composite system, therefore we must add to Eq.(43) the following terms

$$V_2(\eta ,\phi )=\mathrm{\Pi }\eta ^{}\eta \phi ^{}\phi +\delta \eta ^{}\phi \eta \phi ^{}+\mathrm{}$$
(49)
The introduction of this expression in the potential of Eq.(43) will shift the vevs generated by the effective fields $`\eta `$ and $`\phi `$, and the vev associated to the field $`\eta `$ will be shifted to

$$\eta \left(\begin{array}{c}\epsilon \\ 0\\ v_\eta \end{array}\right).$$
(50)
We do not include the shift in the vev of $`\phi `$, because $`v_\eta v_\phi `$ and the modification is negligible. Note that the Yukawa lagrangian that we discussed in Eq.(47) in terms of the new vevs can be written as

$$_Y=a\overline{c}_Lv_\eta u_Ra\overline{u}_Lv_\eta c_R+b\overline{t}_Lv_\phi t_Ra\overline{c}_L\epsilon t_R+a\overline{t}_L\epsilon c_R.$$
(51)
Therefore, in the $`(u,c,t)`$ basis, the structure of the mass matrix now is

$$\overline{m}^{\frac{2}{3}}=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0& av_\eta & 0\\ av_\eta & 0& a\epsilon \\ 0& a\epsilon & bv_\phi \end{array}\right).$$
(52)
This example was motivated by a system of fundamental Higgs bosons ref3 . But the most remarkable fact is that we can reproduce this result with a composite system formed by the effective low energy theories coming from qcd and tc as we shall see in the following. The coefficient $`\epsilon `$ in Eq.(50) will result from the minimization of the full potential

$`V(\eta ,\phi )=`$ $`\mu _\eta ^2\eta ^{}\eta +\lambda _\eta (\eta ^{}\eta )^2+\mu _\phi ^2\phi ^{}\phi +\lambda _\phi (\phi ^{}\phi )^2+`$ (53)
$`\mathrm{\Pi }\eta ^{}\eta \phi ^{}\phi +\delta \eta ^{}\phi \eta \phi ^{}.`$
This coefficient can be calculated if we assume that $`\eta `$ is given by Eq.(50), $`\phi `$ is the same vev described by Eq.(45) and both are related to the tc and qcd condensates. We will neglect $`\delta `$ compared to $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ in Eq.(49), what is reasonable if we look at Fig.(6) ($`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ is given by the first diagram). The coupling $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ is computed from the first diagram of Fig.(6) using the effective vertex $`\chi \chi WW`$ shown in Fig.(7), where an ordinary fermion runs in the loop,

where the $`\chi `$ field may indicate technicolor ($`\chi =\eta `$) or qcd ($`\chi =\phi `$) composites scalar bosons. To compute Fig.(7) we also need the effective coupling between the composite scalars boson and the ordinary fermions. This one has been calculated in the work of Carpenter et al. carpenter ; soni  some years ago and it is shown in Fig.(8).

After a series of steps the calculation of the diagram of Fig.(7) will be given by

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_{\chi \chi WW}\frac{g_W^4\delta ^{ab}}{M_W^2}\frac{g^{\mu \nu }}{32\pi ^2}d^2q\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_\chi ^2}{q^2}.$$
(54)
Following closely the procedure adopted by Carpenter et al. soni  we may approximate the self energy by $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\chi \mu _\chi \left(\frac{q^2}{\mu _\chi ^2}\right)^\varsigma ,`$ where $`\varsigma _\chi =\frac{3C_{2\chi }g_\chi ^2}{16\pi ^2}`$ , to obtain the following coupling between two composite scalars and the intermediate gauge bosons of the weak interaction

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_{\chi \chi WW}\frac{M_W^2\delta ^{ab}}{2\pi ^2}\frac{G_F^2\mu _\chi ^2}{\varsigma _\chi }g^{\mu \nu }.$$
(55)
In Eq.(55) we made use of the relation $`\frac{G_F}{\sqrt{2}}=\frac{g_W^2}{8M_W^2}`$. Note that the coupling between scalars and gauge bosons is dominated by the ultraviolet limit, where the approximation for the self energy discussed above is also valid. The effective coupling $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ in Eq.(53) is equivalent to the calculation of the first diagram of Fig.(6). Using Eq.(55) we will come to the following expression

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_{\eta \eta \phi \phi }=\frac{M_W^4G_F^4\mu _{tc}^2\mu _{qcd}^2}{32\pi ^8\varsigma _{tc}\varsigma _{qcd}}.$$
(56)
We can now approximately determine the value of $`\epsilon `$ assuming that the potential of Eq.(43) has a minimum described by the vevs $`\phi `$, Eq.(45), and $`\eta `$, Eq.(50), what lead us to the following value of the potential at minimum

$$V(\eta ,\phi )|_{min}=\mu _\eta ^2v_\eta ^2+\lambda _\eta v_\eta ^4+\mu _\phi ^2v_\phi ^2+\lambda _\phi v_\phi ^4+\lambda _\eta \epsilon ^4.$$
(57)
We then compare the minimum of this potential with the one obtained from Eq.(53), where the term proportional to $`\delta `$ is neglected in comparison to the one proportional to $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$. This is equivalent to say that the second diagram of Fig.(6) is much smaller then the first diagram, and the vevs entering in Eq.(53) are the unperturbed ones because the perturbation will enter through the $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ term. Finally, assuming that the coefficient describing the coupling between four scalar bosons that are formed in the chiral symmetry breaking of QCD is given bysoni

$$\lambda _\eta =\frac{G_F^2\mu _{qcd}^4c_{qcd}\alpha _{qcd}}{\pi },$$
(58)
and we can obtain a similar expression for $`\lambda _\phi `$ after changing the indices $`qcd`$ by $`tc`$. Equalizing $`v_\eta `$ and $`v_\phi `$ to the known qcd and tc condensates (assuming $`\overline{\psi }_i\psi _i=v^3\mu _i^3`$ hg ), we conclude that

$$\epsilon B\left(\frac{M_W^4G_F^2\mu _{tc}^4}{18\pi ^3c_{tc}\alpha _{tc}}\right)^{\frac{1}{4}}GeV16.8GeV.$$
(59)
The surprising fact in this calculation is that the coupling of the different scalar bosons has been determined dynamically and gives exactly the expected value for the nondiagonal coefficient $`B`$. In models with fundamental scalar bosons this value results from one ad hoc choice. In this section we presented our model, determined the main diagrams contributing to the fermion masses and showed that this scenario naturally leads to a fermion mass matrix with the Fritzsch texture. We have not tested many other models, but it seems that we may have a full class of models along the line that we are proposing here. Because of the peculiar dynamics that we are assuming we need only a horizontal symmetry and a partial unification of the standard model and the value of their mass scales will not strongly modify our predictions (although the chosen horizontal symmetry will). Of course, the breaking of the unified and/or horizontal symmetry will happen at a very high energy scale and will not be discussed here. In particular, this symmetry breaking can be even promoted by fundamental scalars which naturally can appear near the Planck scale.

## 4 Computing the mass matrix

We can now compute the mass matrix. Let us first consider only the $`\frac{2}{3}`$ charged quarks and verify their different contributions to the matrix in Eq.(4). These will come from the diagrams labeled (a), (b) and (c) in Fig.(3) and are equal to

$`A=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _{qcd}}{10c_{qcd}\alpha _{qcd}}}\left[1+bg_{qcd}^2ln{\displaystyle \frac{M_5^2}{\mu _{qcd}^2}}\right]^{\gamma _{qcd}+1}+`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{4\mu _{qcd}}{135c_{qcd}\alpha _{qcd}}}\left[1+bg_{qcd}^2ln{\displaystyle \frac{M_h^2}{\mu _{qcd}^2}}\right]^{\gamma _{qcd}+1},`$
$`B=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{28\mu _{tc}}{675\pi c_{tc}\alpha _{tc}}}\left[1+bg_{tc}^2ln{\displaystyle \frac{M_9^2}{\mu _{tc}^2}}\right]^{\gamma _{tc}+1},`$
$`C=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\mu _{tc}}{15c_{tc}\alpha _{tc}}}\left[1+bg_{tc}^2ln{\displaystyle \frac{M_9^2}{\mu _{tc}^2}}\right]^{\gamma _{tc}+1}.`$ (60)
Where the contributions for $`A`$, $`B`$ and $`C`$ come respectively from the diagrams (a), (b) and (c) displayed in Fig.(3). The values $`A`$, $`B`$ and $`C`$ correspond to the nondiagonal masses in the horizontal symmetry basis. To come to these values we assumed $`\alpha _k(=\alpha _9=\alpha _h=\alpha _5)\frac{1}{45}`$ at the unification scale. We also assumed, when computing diagrams involving the technileptons and techniquarks condensates, the following relation

$$\overline{L}L=\frac{1}{3}\overline{Q}Q,$$
(61)
because the techniquarks carry also the three color degrees of freedom. As the mass matrix is the same obtained in Ref.fritzsch  we can use the same diagonalization procedure to obtain the $`t`$, $`c`$ and $`u`$ quark masses, which is given by

$$M_{f_{Diag}}^{\frac{2}{3}}=R^1M_f^{\frac{2}{3}}R,$$
(62)
where $`R`$ is a rotation matrix described in Ref.fritzsch . After diagonalization we obtain

$$m_u\frac{A^2}{B^2}C,m_c\frac{B^2}{C}\mathrm{and}m_tC,$$
(63)
where the values of $`A`$, $`B`$ and $`C`$ are the ones shown in Eq.(60). We will also assume the unification mass scale as $`M_9=M_510^{16}`$ GeV and the horizontal mass scale equal to $`M_h10^{13}`$ GeV. The several constants contained in Eq.(60) are $`b_{tc}=\frac{1}{16\pi ^2}\frac{26}{3}`$, $`b_{qcd}=\frac{7}{16\pi ^2}`$, $`\gamma _{tc}=\frac{15}{23}`$ and $`\gamma _{qcd}=\frac{4}{7}`$. We remember again that we assumed $`\alpha _k\frac{1}{45}`$, $`\mu _{tc}=250GeV`$ and $`\mu _{qcd}=250MeV`$. The fermion masses come out as a function of the parameter $`c_{(tc,qcd)}\alpha _{(tc,qcd)}`$. For simplicity (as well as a reasonable choice) we will define $`c\alpha =c_{tc}\alpha _{tc}=c_{qcd}\alpha _{qcd}=0.5`$.

We display in Table 1 the fermionic mass spectrum obtained in this model. Some of the values show a larger disagreement in comparison to the experimental values, and others show a quite reasonable agreement if we consider all the approximations that we have performed and the fact that we have a totally dynamical scheme.

It is also impressive that $`B`$ in Eq.(60), neglecting logarithimic terms, is roughly giving by $`B14\alpha _hm_t/\pi `$ which is of order of $`17`$ GeV. This is the expected value according to the estimative of the previous section (see Eq.(59)). In some way this is also expected in a mechanism where one fermionic generation obtain a mass at 1-loop level coupling to the next higher generation fermion (see, for instance, Ref.ref5 ). The values of the $`u`$ and $`e`$ masses can be easily lowered with a smaller value of $`\mu _{qcd}`$. Of course, we are also assuming a very particular form for the mass matrix based in one particular family symmetry. Better knowledge of the symmetry behind the mass matrix, and a better understanding of the strong interaction group alignment will certainly improve the comparisom between data and theory. The high value for the masses obtained for some of the second generation fermions also come out from the overestimation of the $`b`$ and $`\tau `$ masses. The mass splitting between the $`t`$ and $`b`$ quarks, which is far from the desirable result, is a problem that has not been satisfactorily solved in most of the dynamical models of mass generation up to now. It is possible that an extra symmetry, preventing these fermions to obtain masses at the leading order as suggested by Raby raby  can be easily implemented in this model. We will discuss these points again in the conclusions. Finally considering that we do not have any flavor changing neutral current problems dime , because the interaction between fermion and technifermions has been pushed to very high energies, and that we assume only the existence of quite expected symmetries (a gauge group containing tc and the standard model and a horizontal symmetry) the model does quite well in comparison with many other models.

## 5 Pseudo-Goldstone boson masses

Another problem in technicolor models is the proliferation of pseudo-Goldstone bosons weisus ; hillsi ; ref6 . After the chiral symmetry breaking of the strongly interacting sector a large number of Goldstone bosons are formed, and only few of these degrees of freedom are absorbed by the weak interaction gauge bosons. The others may acquire small masses resulting in light pseudo-Goldstone bosons that have not been observed experimentally. In our model these bosons obtain masses that are large enough to have escaped detection at the present accelerator energies, but will show up at the next generation of accelerators (for instance, LHC). We can list the possible pseudo Goldstone bosons according to their different quantum numbers:

Colored pseudos: They carry color degrees of freedom and can be divided into the 3 or 8 color representations. We can indicate them by

$$\mathrm{\Pi }^a\overline{Q}\gamma _5\lambda ^aQ.$$

Charged pseudos: These ones carry electric charge and we can take as one example the following current

$$\mathrm{\Pi }^+\overline{L}\gamma _5Q,$$

where $`Q(L)`$ indicate the techniquark (technilepton) fields.

Neutral pseudos: They do not carry color or charge and one example is

$$\mathrm{\Pi }^0\overline{N}\gamma _5N.$$

Following closely Ref.ref6  the standard procedure to determine the $`SU(3)_{qcd}`$ contribution to the mass ($`M_c`$) of a colored pseudo Goldstone boson gives

$`M_c`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{C_2(R)\alpha _c(\mu )}{\alpha _{el}}}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{F_\mathrm{\Pi }}{f_\pi }}35.5MeV`$ (64)
$`170\sqrt{C_2(R)}GeVO(300)GeV.`$
While the electromagnetic contribution to the mass of the charged pseudos Goldstone bosons is estimated to be ref6

$$M_{em}Q_{ps}\frac{F_\mathrm{\Pi }}{f_\pi }35.5MeVQ_{ps}47GeVO(50GeV),$$
(65)
in the equations above we assumed that the technipion and pion decay constants are given by $`F_\mathrm{\Pi }125GeV`$ and $`f_\pi 95MeV`$, $`Q_{ps}`$ is the electric charge of the pseudo-Goldstone boson, and $`C_2(R)`$ is the quadratic Casimir operator in the representation $`R`$ of the pseudo-Goldstone boson under the tc group. There is not much to change in these standard calculations, except that due to the particular form of the technifermion self energy the technifermion will acquire large current masses, and subsequently the pseudos-Goldstone bosons formed with these ones. We know that any chiral current $`\mathrm{\Pi }^f`$ can be written as a vacuum term $`m_f\overline{\psi }_f\psi _f`$ plus electroweak (color, …) corrections adriano , where $`m_f`$ is the current mass of the fermion $`\psi _f`$ participating in the composition of the current $`\mathrm{\Pi }^f`$, neglecting the electroweak corrections and using PCAC in the case of qcd we obtain the Dashen relation

$$m_\pi ^2\frac{m_q\overline{q}q}{f_\pi ^2},$$
(66)
where $`\overline{q}q`$ is the quark condensate. Of course this relation is valid for any chiral current and in particular for the technifermions we can write

$$M_\mathrm{\Pi }^2\frac{M_{T_f}\overline{T_f}T_f}{F_\mathrm{\Pi }^2},$$
(67)
where $`M_{T_f}`$ is the technifermion current mass. In the usual models (with the self-energy given by Eq.(6)) the technifermions are massless or acquire very tiny masses leading to negligible values for $`M_\mathrm{\Pi }`$. In our model this is not true. All technifermions acquire masses due to the self-interaction with their own condensates through the interchange of $`SU(9)`$ bosons.

There are several bosons in the $`SU(9)`$ (and also in the $`SU(3)_H`$) theory connecting to technifermions and generating a current mass as is shown in Fig.(9).

A simple estimative, based on Eq.(7), of the contribution of Fig.(9) to the technifermion masses gives

$$M_{T_{f_{SU(9)}}}\stackrel{>}{_{}}O(80130)GeV.$$
(68)
If we also include the contribution of the same diagram where the exchanged boson is a horizontal $`SU(3)_H`$ boson coupling technifermions of different generations, we must add to the above value the following one

$$M_{T_{f_{SU(3)_H}}}\stackrel{>}{_{}}O(1040)GeV.$$
(69)
Therefore, we expect that the technifermion current masses are at least of the order of $`M_{T_f}O(100)GeV`$. Now, according to Eq.(67) and assuming $`\overline{T_f}T_fF_\mathrm{\Pi }^3`$ we have the following estimative for the pseudo-Goldstone boson masses

$$M_\mathrm{\Pi }\stackrel{>}{_{}}O(100)GeV.$$
(70)
Note that in this calculation we have not considered the qcd or electroweak corrections discussed previously. Therefore, even if the pseudo-Goldstones bosons do not acquire masses due to qcd or electroweak corrections they will at least have masses of order of $`100`$ GeV because of the “current” technifermion masses obtained at the $`SU(9)`$ (or $`SU(3)_H`$) level.

## 6 Conclusions

We have presented a technicolor theory based on the group structure $`SU(9)\times SU(3)_H`$. The model is based on a particular ansatz for the tc and qcd self energy. We argue that our ansatz for qcd, in view of the many recent results about its infrared behavior, is a plausible one, but even if it is considered as an “ad-hoc” choice for the self energy the main point is that it leads to a consistent model for fermion masses. This is the only new ingredient in the model, all the others (unification of tc and the standard model and the existence of a horizontal symmetry) are naturally expected in the current scenario of particle physics. One of the characteristics of the model is that the first fermionic generation basically obtain masses due to the interaction with the qcd condensate, whereas the third generation obtain masses due to its coupling with the tc condensate. The reason for this particular coupling and for the alignment of the strong theory sectors generating intermediate masses is provided by the $`SU(3)_H`$ horizontal symmetry. Of course, our model is not successful in predicting all the fermion masses although it has a series of advantages. It does not need the presence of many etc boson masses to generate the different fermionic mass scales. The etc theory is replaced by an unified and horizontal symmetries. It has no flavor changing neutral currents or unwanted light pseudo-Goldstone bosons. There are many points that still need some work in this line of model. The breaking of the $`SU(9)`$ and horizontal symmetries is not discussed, and just assumed to happen near the Planck scale and possibly could be promoted by fundamental scalar bosons. The mass splitting in the third generation could be produced with the introduction of a new symmetry. For instance, if in the $`SU(9)`$ breaking besides the standard model interactions and the tc one we leave an extra $`U(1)`$, maybe we could have quantum numbers such that only the top quark would be allowed to couple to the tc condensate at leading order. This possibility should be further studied because it also may introduce large quantum corrections in the model. If the unified group ($`SU(9)`$ in our case) is not broken by a dynamical mechanism, i.e. we do not need that this group tumbles down to $`SU(4)_{tc}SM`$, then we could replace $`SU(4)_{tc}`$ by one smaller group (perhaps $`SU(2)_{tc}`$) which becomes stronger at the scale $`\mu 250`$ GeV. In this class of models we can choose different groups containing tc and the standard model, as well as different horizontal symmetries with different textures for the mass matrix. These will certainly modify the values of the fermion masses that we have obtained. The alignment of the strongly interacting sectors can be studied only with many approximations, but it is quite possible that it generates more entries to the mass matrix than only the term $`B`$. Another great advantage of the model is that it is quite independent of the very high energy interactions (like $`SU(9)`$ or $`SU(3)_H`$), although the horizontal symmetry is fundamental to obtain the desired mass matrices, and we believe that variations of this model can be formulated.

## 7 Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) (AAN) and by Fundacão de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) (AD).


text:
# Decay of Magnetic Fields in the Early UniversePresented at Strong & Electroweak Matter 2002, Heidelberg, Oct 2–5 2002

## 1 Introduction

Magnetic fields are found everywhere in the Universe, from planets to galaxy clusters. On the galactic scale and above, the strength is of order a few $`\mu `$Gauss, maintained by dynamo action, with a characteristic timescale of roughly a rotation period, $`10^8`$ yr. A seed is required to start the dynamo, and a simple calculation based on the age of a typical galaxy shows that the seed field must have been about $`10^{20}`$ Gauss.

There are many ideas for the origin of seed field. Most conservatively, a Biermann battery operated at the era of reionisation. More speculatively, a field could have been generated in the early Universe, which would have given rise to stochastic, homogeneous and isotropic magnetic and velocity fields, characterized by their power spectra and initial length scales. In order to know the strength and coherence scale of this field today, we must study freely decaying magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. This talk reports earlier work where we have developed a new framework for understanding decaying 3D MHD turbulence, in the case where the fields are close to being maximally helical, as in the mechanisms proposed earlier.

Of particular interest are how the coherence length $`\xi `$, the magnetic energy $`E_\mathrm{M}`$ and magnetic helicity $`H`$ evolve with time. Their growth and decay are thought to be power laws, resulting from an inverse cascade, in which power is transferred locally in $`k`$-space from small to large scales. This is not a new problem: there are models both with and without helicity, and numerical simulations have also been performed. We have now developed what we believe is the definitive answer for the evolution of helical magnetic fields between the electroweak phase transition and the time of $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation.

## 2 3D MHD simulations of decaying turbulence

The MHD equations in an expanding Universe are most conveniently expressed in terms of conformally rescaled fields $`𝐁`$ (where $`𝐁=\times 𝐀`$ is the magnetic field in terms of the magnetic vector potential $`𝐀`$), $`𝐮`$ (the velocity) and dissipation parameters $`\nu `$ (kinematic viscosity), $`\eta `$ (magnetic diffusivity). The current density $`𝐉=\times 𝐁`$.

In the ideal limit $`\nu =\eta =0`$, there is an important conserved quantity in addition to the total energy, which is the magnetic helicity $`H=𝐀𝐁d^3x,`$ also known as the Abelian Chern-Simons number. Also important is the magnetic Reynolds number $`Re_\mathrm{M}=\xi v/\eta `$, where $`\xi `$ and $`v`$ are the typical length scale and velocity of the system, because it measures the relative size of the non-linear term in the induction equation.

We solve the MHD equations numerically, taking $`𝐮`$ and $`𝐁`$ to be homogeneous and isotropic Gaussian random fields drawn from a power-law distribution with a high wavenumber cut-off. The initial helicity, ranged from identically zero to maximal, where the inequality $`|H(k)|2k^1E_\mathrm{M}(k)`$ is saturated. Helicity is not exactly conserved in our simulations, and providing that the magnetic energy spectrum $`E_\mathrm{M}(k)`$ decays faster than $`k^2`$, we can define a helicity scale $`\xi _\mathrm{H}`$ such that

$$\dot{H}=2\eta H/\xi _\mathrm{H}^2.$$
(1)
If we assume that the evolution of $`\xi _\mathrm{H}`$ is described by a power law $`\xi _\mathrm{H}t^r`$ it is clear that only if $`r=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.5}`$ does the magnetic helicity show a power law decay $`H=H_0(t/t_0)^{2s}`$ where $`s=(\xi _{\mathrm{diff}}/\xi _H)^2`$, in terms of the diffusion scale $`\xi _{\mathrm{diff}}=2\pi \sqrt{\eta t}`$. Additional length scales we consider are the integral scale $`\xi _\mathrm{I}=2\pi 𝑑kk^1E_\mathrm{M}(k)/𝑑kE_\mathrm{M}(k)`$, the relative helicity scale $`\xi _\mathrm{R}=\pi |H|/E_\mathrm{M}`$ and the magnetic Taylor microscale $`\xi _\mathrm{T}=2\pi B_{\mathrm{rms}}/J_{\mathrm{rms}}`$, where $`B_{\mathrm{rms}}`$ and $`J_{\mathrm{rms}}`$ are the RMS magnetic field and current density respectively. It is plausible that all these scales are proportionally related and Fig. 1 shows that this is indeed the case.

From the bound on the helicity power spectrum one can show $`H_{\mathrm{REL}}=(\xi _\mathrm{R}/\xi _\mathrm{I})1`$, so if this bound remains approximately saturated, and the helicity scale goes as $`\xi _\mathrm{H}t^{0.5}`$, the decay law for the magnetic energy is

$$E_\mathrm{M}t^{0.52s}.$$
(2)
Given $`H_{\mathrm{REL}}=\xi _\mathrm{R}/\xi _\mathrm{I}`$, it is seen from Fig. 1 that $`H_{\mathrm{REL}}`$ is indeed of order unity and does not decay markedly with time.

To characterize the decay laws we define

$$Q(t)=t\dot{E}_\mathrm{M}/E_\mathrm{M},R(t)=t\dot{H}/2H.$$
(3)
In Fig. 2a we have plotted $`R(t)`$ versus the quantity $`s(t)=(\xi _{\mathrm{diff}}/\xi _H)^2`$ for several runs with different initial conditions.

This figure tells us that the value of $`R`$ is approximately independent of time which confirms the power law decay of $`H`$. Fig. 2a also indicates that the quantity $`s`$ is also approximately independent of time, hence reinforcing the relation $`\xi _Ht^{0.5}`$.

Taking the relative helicity to be constant, it follows from the power-law behavior of $`H`$ that Eq. (2) is the energy decay law. In the limit of exact conservation of magnetic helicity, $`s0`$, the magnetic energy must decay according to the power law $`E_\mathrm{M}t^{0.5}`$.

The parameter $`s`$ has interesting physical significance. Note that if $`\xi _\mathrm{H}vt`$, where $`v`$ is the RMS velocity, (i.e. if the eddy turn-over time is $`t`$) then $`s(2\pi )^2/Re_\mathrm{M}`$, where $`Re_\mathrm{M}`$ is the magnetic Reynolds number evaluated using the helicity scale $`\xi _\mathrm{H}`$. We have measured the ratio $`f=vt/\xi _\mathrm{H}`$ and $`Re_\mathrm{M}^1`$ for all runs, and find that they are both approximately constant, and are linearly related. This means there should be a linear relation between $`s`$ and $`Re_\mathrm{M}^1`$, and hence a quadratic relation between $`Q(t)`$, the energy decay exponent defined in Eq. (3), and $`Re_\mathrm{M}^1`$. Fig. 2b, showing $`Q`$ and $`Re_\mathrm{M}^1`$, confirms that this is indeed the case, with asymptote at large $`Re_\mathrm{M}`$ consistent with $`Q=0.5`$. Finally, assuming only that the magnetic energy power spectrum is self-similar, and that Ohmic dissipation, if not dominant, always contributes a constant fraction to the energy loss, one can show that the characteristic length scale of the field $`\xi `$ must scale as $`t^{0.5}`$, thus justifying the assumption made at the start of this section.

## 3 Discussion and conclusions

To summarize, we have studied the evolution of decaying 3D MHD turbulence involving maximally helical magnetic fields. For finite magnetic diffusivity there emerges an important quantity $`s=(\xi _{\mathrm{diff}}/\xi _\mathrm{H})^2`$, where $`\xi _\mathrm{H}`$ is the helicity scale defined in Eq. (1), and $`\xi _{\mathrm{diff}}`$ is the diffusion scale. We find $`\xi _\mathrm{H}vt`$, where $`v`$ is the RMS velocity, and hence that $`sRe_\mathrm{M}^1`$, the magnetic Reynolds number evaluated using the helicity scale. The magnetic field coherence length (which can be equally well expressed as the integral, helicity or relative helicity scales) goes as $`\xi t^{0.5}`$, magnetic helicity $`H_\mathrm{M}t^{2s}`$ and magnetic energy $`E_\mathrm{M}t^{0.52s}`$. A corollary is that $`Re_\mathrm{M}`$ is constant once the system has reached self-similarity. Furthermore, we can extrapolate to the limit of very large magnetic Reynolds numbers, useful for example in the early Universe, to find $`H`$ constant and $`E_\mathrm{M}t^{0.5}`$.