  Fermion masses and mixing matrices can be described in terms of spontaneously
broken (global or gauge) flavor symmetries. We propose a little-Higgs inspired
scenario in which an SU(2)xU(1) gauge flavor symmetry is spontaneously (and
completely) broken by the vacuum of the dynamically induced potential for two
scalar doublets (the flavons) which are pseudo-Goldstone bosons remaining after
the spontaneous breaking--at a scale between 10 and 100 TeV--of an approximate
SU(6) global symmetry. The vacuum expectation values of the flavons give rise
to the texture in the fermion mass matrices. We discuss in detail the case of
leptons. Light-neutrino masses arise by means of a see-saw-like mechanism that
takes place at the same scale at which the SU(6) global symmetry is broken. We
show that without any fine tuning of the parameters the experimental values of
the charged-lepton masses,the neutrino square mass differences and the
Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata mixing matrix are reproduced.

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology