FLAVOR VIOLATION IN A MINIMAL SO(10) x A4 SUSY GUT

Flavor violating processes in the quark and lepton sectors are investigated within a realistic supersymmetric SO(10) x A(4) grand unification model. By employing exotic heavy fermion fields, this model successfully describes various features of the fermion masses and mixings including large neutrino mixings accompanied by small quark mixings. In this model the flavor violation is induced at GUT scale, at which A4 flavor symmetry is broken, as a consequence of the large mixings of the light fermion fields with these exotic heavy fields. The stringent experimental constraint from mu --> e gamma decay rate necessitates a high degree of degeneracy of the supersymmetry breaking soft scalar masses of the exotic heavy fields and supersymmetric scalar partners of the light fermion fields. The choice of slepton masses of order 1 TeV is found to be consistent with the constraints from branching ratio of mu --> e gamma and with all other flavor changing neutral current processes being sufficiently suppressed.