Renormalization group evolution of flavour invariants

The fermion spectrum in the Standard Model (SM) exhibits hierarchical structures between the eigenvalues of the Yukawa matrices which determine the fermion masses, as well as certain hierarchical patterns in the mixing matrix that describes weak transitions between different fermion generations. A basis-independent description of the SM flavour structure can be given in terms of a complete set of flavour invariants. In this paper, we construct a convenient set of such invariants, and discuss the general form of the renormalization-group equations. We also discuss the simplifications that arise from exploiting hierarchies in Yukwawa couplings and mixings which are present in the SM or its minimal-flavour violating extensions.