GENERATIONAL MASS GENERATION AND SYMMETRY-BREAKING

A BCS theory of quark and lepton mass generation leads to a nonlinear self-interaction term in the Lagrangian whose natural representation is the "democratic" basis. We show, within the BCS framework, how the original U(3)L×U(3)R symmetry of the massless ur quarks and ur leptons is systematically broken so as to lead to the observed quark and lepton spectra, consistent with their mass hierarchies, and the additional hierarchy of weak mixing angles manifested in the Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix. Experiment cannot currently distinguish between such symmetry breaking as proposed by Fritzsch and Plankl, by us, or by others. © 1990 The American Physical Society.