A framework for dynamical generation of flavor mixing

Abstract

We present a dynamical mechanism \`a la Nambu--Jona-Lasinio 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., 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 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.