A Dynamical Mechanism for Quark Mixing and Neutrino Oscillations

We show that assuming fermion generations to be given by a gauge symmetry plus a certain Higgs mechanism for its breaking, the known empirical features of quark and lepton mixing can be largely explained, including in particular the fact that the mixing (CKM) matrix element $U_{\mu3}$ responsible for the muon anomaly in atmospheric neutrinos is near maximal and much larger than their quark counterparts $V_{cb}$ and $V_{ts}$, while the corner elements for both quarks ($V_{ub}, V_{td}$) and leptons ($U_{e3}$) are all very small. The mechanism also gives automatically a hierarchical fermion mass spectrum which is intimately related to the mixing pattern.