Minimal mixing of quarks and leptons in the SU(3) theory of flavour

We argue that flavour mixing, both in the quark and lepton sector, follows the minimal Mixing pattern, according to which the whole of this mixing is basically determined by the physical mass generation for the first family of fermions. So, in the chiral symmetry limit when the masses of the lightest (u and d) quarks vanish, all the quark mixing angles vanish. This minimal pattern is shown to fit extremely well the already established CKM matrix elements and to give fairly distinctive predictions for the as yet poorly known ones. Remarkably, together with generically small quark mixing, it also leads to large neutrino mixing, provided that neutrino masses appear through the ordinary "see-saw" mechanism. It is natural to think that this minimal flavour mixing pattern presupposes some underlying family symmetry, treating families of quarks and leptons in a special way. Indeed, we have found a local chiral SU(3)(F) family symmetry model which leads, through its dominant symmetry breaking vacuum configuration, to a natural realization of the proposed minimal mechanism. It can also naturally generate the quark and lepton mass hierarchies. Furthermore spontaneous CP violation is possible, leading to a maximal CP violating phase delta = pi/2, in the framework of the MSSM extended by a high-scale SU(3)(F) chiral family symmetry. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.