Clockwork Goldstone Bosons

Abstract: 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 manifest in the scalar components of 5D gauge theories in the linear dilaton model, and build their 4D deconstructed analogue. Finally we discuss attempts at building both 4D and 5D realizations of a non-abelian scalar clockwork mechanism, where in the latter we consider scenarios in which the Goldstone bosons arise from 5D scalar and 5D gauge fields.