Patterns of remnant discrete symmetries

Abstract

We analyze patterns of remnant discrete symmetries that arise from U(1)^N theories by spontaneous breaking. We describe a simple, geometrical way to understand these patterns and provide methods for identifying the discrete symmetries and bringing them to the simplest possible form. Applications in GUT and string model building are briefly discussed.

Comments: 14 pages, 2 figures, a related Mathematica package can be downloaded from http://einrichtungen.physik.tu-muenchen.de/T30e/codes/DiscreteBreaking/