Spacetime as a topological insulator: mechanism for the origin of the fermion generations.
We suggest a mechanism whereby the three generations of quarks and leptons correspond to surface modes in a five-dimensional theory. These modes arise from a nonlinear fermion dispersion relation in the extra dimension, much in the same manner as fermion surface modes in a topological insulator or lattice implementation of domain wall fermions. We also show that the topological properties can persist in a deconstructed version of the model in four dimensions.
Institute for Nuclear Theory, University of Washington, Box 351550, Seattle, Washington 98195-1550, USA. dbkaplan@uw.edu
David B
DB
Kaplan
Sichun
S
Sun