Should Squarks Be Degenerate?

Abstract

For generic squark masses, box diagrams with squarks and gluinos give unacceptably large contributions to neutral meson ($K$, $B$ and $D$) mixing. The standard solution to this problem is to assume that squarks are degenerate to a very good approximation. We suggest an alternative mechanism to suppress squark contributions to flavor changing neutral currents: the alignment of quark with squark mass matrices. This mechanism arises naturally in the framework of Abelian horizontal symmetries.