Axel Gross with Kurt Hinterbichler and Pavel Fileviez Perez

Implications of Gauge Unication without Leptoquarks

While the Standard Model has been veried on numerous occasions and has been successful in predicting several new particles, it is incomplete. It fails to explain many of the current problems in physics, such as the origin of the forces or the origin of baryon asymmetry.  Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) attempt to explain that which the Standard Model cannot by describing particle interactions as the action under a single symmetry group which spontaneously breaks into the Standard Model symmetry groups at low energies. While Grand Unified Theories have had some successes; for example, prediction of the quantization of electric charge, they have struggled with proton stability.

Recently, some have proposed that, in minimal SU(5), imposing certain constraints on the scalar fields, it is possible to eliminate the new vector bosons which give rise to proton decay. If this were the case, it would greatly enhance the candidacy of GUTs to replace the Standard Model. However, the constraints that are imposed are arbitrary, and their implications have not been fully explored. We seek to explore the implications of these constraints to determine whether or not this alternative formulation of SU(5) has any viability.