Large Top-Quark Mass and Nonlinear Representation of Flavor Symmetry

We consider an effective theory (ET) approach to flavor-violating processes beyond the standard model, where the breaking of flavor symmetry is described by spurion fields whose low-energy vacuum expectation values are identified with the standard model Yukawa couplings. Insisting on canonical mass dimensions for the spurion fields, the large top-quark Yukawa coupling also implies a large expectation value for the associated spurion, which breaks part of the flavor symmetry already at the UV scale Λ of the ET. Below that scale, flavor symmetry in the ET is represented in a nonlinear way by introducing Goldstone modes for the partly broken flavor symmetry and spurion fields transforming under the residual symmetry. As a result, the dominance of certain flavor structures in rare quark decays can be understood in terms of the 1/Λ expansion in the ET.