Flavor violation in supersymmetric theories with gauged flavor symmetries

Abstract

In this paper we study flavor violation in supersymmetric models with gauged flavor symmetries. There are several sources of flavor violation in these theories. The dominant flavor violation is the tree-level $D$-term contribution to scalar masses generated by flavor symmetry breaking. We present a new approach for suppressing this phenomenologically dangerous effects by separating the flavor-breaking sector from supersymmetry-breaking one. The separation can be achieved in geometrical setups or in a dynamical way. We also point out that radiative corrections from the gauginos of gauged flavor symmetries give sizable generation-dependent masses of scalars. The gaugino mass effects are generic and not suppressed even if the dominant $D$-term contribution is suppressed. We also analyze the constraints on the flavor symmetry sector from these flavor-violating corrections.