Clockwork Goldstone Bosons

2017

The clockwork mechanism has recently been proposed as a natural way to generate hierarchies among parameters in quantum field theories. The mechanism is characterized by a very specific pattern of spontaneous and explicit symmetry breaking, and the presence of new light states referred to as `gears'. In this paper we begin by investigating the self-interactions of these gears in a scalar clockwork model and find a parity-like selection rule at all orders in the fields. We then proceed to investigate how the clockwork mechanism can be realized in 5D linear dilaton models from the spontaneous symmetry breaking of a complex bulk scalar field. We also discuss how the clockwork mechanism is mani…