Abstract: The framed standard model (FSM), constructed to explain the empirical mass and mixing patterns (including CP phases) of quarks and leptons, in which it has done quite well, gives otherwise the same result as the standard model (SM) in almost all areas in particle physics where the SM has been successfully applied, except for a few specified deviations such as the W mass and the g-2 of muons, that is, just where experiment is showing departures from what SM predicts. It predicts further the existence of a hidden sector of particles some of which may function as dark matter. In this paper, we first note that the above results involve, surprisingly, the FSM undergoing a vacuum transition (VTR1) at a scale of around 17MeV, where the vacuum expectation values of the colour framons (framed vectors promoted into fields) which are all nonzero above that scale acquire some vanishing components below it. This implies that the metric pertaining to these vanishing components would vanish also. Important consequences should then ensue, but these occur mostly in the unknown hidden sector where empirical confirmation is hard at present to come by, but they give small reflections in the standard sector, some of which may have already been seen. However, one notes that if, going off at a tangent, one imagines colour to be embedded, Kaluza-Klein (KK) fashion, into a higher-dimensional space-time, then this VTR1 would cause 2 of the compactified dimensions to collapse. This might mean then that when the universe cooled to the corresponding temperature of 1011 K when it was about 10-3 s old, this VTR1 collapse would cause the three spatial dimensions of the universe to expand to compensate. The resultant expansion is estimated, using FSM parameters previously determined from particle physics, to be capable, when extrapolated backwards in time, of bringing the present universe back inside the then horizon, solving thus formally the horizon problem. Besides, VTR1 being a global phenomenon in the FSM, it would switch on and off automatically and simultaneously over all space, thus requiring seemingly no additional strategy for a graceful exit. However, this scenario has not been checked for consistency with other properties of the universe and is to be taken thus not as a candidate solution of the horizon problem but only as an observation from particle physics which might be of interest to cosmologists and experts in the early universe. For particle physicists also, it might serve as an indicator for how relevant this VTR1 can be, even if the KK assumption is not made.

Abstract: The framed standard model (FSM) is obtained from the standard model by incorporating, as field variables, the frame vectors (vielbeins) in internal symmetry space. It gives the standard Higgs boson and 3 generations of quarks and leptons as immediate consequences. It gives moreover a fermion mass matrix of the form: m = mT alpha alpha dagger, where alpha is a vector in generation space independent of the fermion species and rotating with changing scale, which has already been shown to lead, generically, to up-down mixing, neutrino oscillations and mass hierarchy. In this paper, pushing the FSM further, one first derives to 1-loop order the RGE for the rotation of alpha, and then applies it to fit mass and mixing data as a first test of the model. With 7 real adjustable parameters, 18 measured quantities are fitted, most (12) to within experimental error or to better than 0.5 percent, and the rest (6) not far off. (A summary of this fit can be found in Table 2 of this paper.) Two notable features, both generic to FSM, not just specific to the fit, are: (i) that a theta-angle of order unity in the instanton term in QCD would translate via rotation into a Kobayashi-Maskawa phase in the CKM matrix of about the observed magnitude (J similar to 10(-5)), (ii) that it would come out correctly that m(u) < m(d), despite the fact that m(t) >> m(b), m(c) >> m(s). Of the 18 quantities fitted, 12 are deemed independent in the usual formulation of the standard model. In fact, the fit gives a total of 17 independent parameters of the standard model, but 5 of these have not been measured by experiment.

Abstract: A bonus of the framed Standard Model (FSM), constructed initially to explain the mass and mixing patterns of quarks and leptons, is a solution (without axions) of the strong CP problem by cancelling the theta-angle term theta(I) Tr(H-mu v H-mu v*) in coloura by a chiral transformation on a quark zero mode which is inherent in FSM, and produces thereby a CP-violating phase in the CKM matrix similar in size to what is observed.' Extending here to flavour, one finds that there are two terms proportional to Tr(G(mu v) G(mu v)*): (a) in the action from flavour instantons with unknown coefficient, say theta(I)', (b) induced by the above FSM solution to the strong CP-problem with therefore known coefficient theta(C)'. Both terms can be cancelled in the FSM by a chiral transformation on the lepton zero mode to give a Jarlskog invariant J' in the PMNS matrix for leptons of order 10(-2), as is hinted by the experiment. But if, as suggested in Ref. 2, the term theta(I)' is to be cancelled by a chiral transformation in the predicted hidden sector to solve the strong CP problem therein, leaving only the term theta(C)' to be cancelled by the chiral transformation on leptons, then the following prediction results: J' similar to -0.012 (delta(CP)'similar to (1.11)pi) which is (i) of the right order, (ii) of the right sign and (iii) in the range favoured by the present experiment. Together with the earlier result for quarks, this offers an attractive unified treatment of all known CP physics.

Abstract: The next to leading order chiral corrections to the SU(2) x SU(2) Gell-Mann-Oakes- Renner (GMOR) relation are obtained using the pseudoscalar correlator to five-loop order in perturbative QCD, together with new finite energy sum rules (FESR) incorporating polynomial, Legendre type, integration kernels. The purpose of these kernels is to suppress hadronic contributions in the region where they are least known. This reduces considerably the systematic uncertainties arising from the lack of direct experimental information on the hadronic resonance spectral function. Three different methods are used to compute the FESR contour integral in the complex energy (squared) s-plane, i.e. Fixed Order Perturbation Theory, Contour Improved Perturbation Theory, and a fixed renormalization scale scheme. We obtain for the corrections to the GMOR relation, delta(pi), the value delta(pi) = (6.2 +/- 1.6)%. This result is substantially more accurate than previous determinations based on QCD sum rules; it is also more reliable as it is basically free of systematic uncertainties. It implies a light quark condensate < 0 vertical bar(u) over baru vertical bar 0 > similar or equal to < 0 vertical bar(d) over bard vertical bar 0 > < 0 vertical bar(q) over barq vertical bar 0 >vertical bar(2GeV) = (-267 +/- 5MeV)(3). As a byproduct, the chiral perturbation theory (unphysical) low energy constant H-2(r) is predicted to be H-2(r)(nu(X) = M-p) = -(5.1 +/- 1.8) x10(-3), or H-2(r) (nu(X) = M-eta) = -(5.7 +/- 2.0) x10(-3).

Abstract: The idea of a rank-one rotating mass matrix (R2M2) is reviewed detailing how it leads to ready explanations both for the fermion mass hierarchy and for the distinctive mixing patterns between up and down fermion states, which can be and have been tested against experiment and shown to be fully consistent with existing data. Further, R2M2 is seen to offer, as by-products: (i) a new solution to the strong CP problem in QCD by linking the theta-angle there to the Kobayashi-Maskawa CP-violating phase in the CKM matrix, and (ii) some novel predictions of possible anomalies in Higgs decay observable in principle at the LHC. A special effort is made to answer some questions raised.