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Abstract

> We build a supersymmetric model of quark and lepton masses based on the discrete flavour symmetry group T', the double covering of A_4. In the lepton sector our model is practically indistinguishable from recent models based on A_4 and, in particular, it predicts a nearly tri-bimaximal mixing, in good agreement with present data. In the quark sector a realistic pattern of masses and mixing angles is obtained by exploiting the doublet representations of T', not available in A_4. To this purpose, the flavour symmetry T' should be broken spontaneously along appropriate directions in flavour space. In this paper we fully discuss the related vacuum alignment problem, both at the leading order and by accounting for small effects coming from higher-order corrections. As a result we get the relations: \sqrt{m_d/m_s}\approx |V_{us}| and \sqrt{m_d/m_s}\approx |V_{td}/V_{ts}|.