Quarks and leptons between branes and bulk

We study a supersymmetric SO(10) gauge theory in six dimensions compactified on an orbifold. Three sequential quark–lepton families are localized at the three fixpoints where SO(10) is broken to its three GUT subgroups. Split bulk multiplets yield the Higgs doublets of the standard model and as additional states lepton doublets and down-quark singlets. The physical quarks and leptons are mixtures of brane and bulk states. The model naturally explains small quark mixings together with large lepton mixings in the charged current. A small hierarchy of neutrino masses is obtained due to the different down-quark and up-quark mass hierarchies. None of the usual GUT relations between fermion masses holds exactly.