Spontaneous Breaking of Flavor Symmetry Avoids the Strong CP Problem

A promising approach to the standard model flavor puzzle is based on the idea that the SU(3)(3) quark-flavor symmetry is spontaneously broken by vacuum expectation values of "Yukawa fields" which minimize the symmetry invariant scalar potential at configurations corresponding to the observed quark masses and mixing angles. We show that this approach provides a simple and elegant explanation for CP conservation in strong interactions.