Speaker
Timon Mede
(IPNP Charles University in Prague)
Description
To take advantage of the expected sensitivity increase in the next generation experiments searching for proton decay (Hyper-K, DUNE, ...), the precision of proton lifetime predictions has to improve significantly, which implies the need to go to the next-to-leading order calculation. That means considering the 2-loop running of all the couplings with the use of the 1-loop threshold effects that account for the actual (split) spectrum. One of the largest uncertainties involved at this level of accuracy is due to the unknown Planck scale effects which introduce shifts in the matching condition that cause an uncertainty of a several orders of magnitude
in the predicted scale of gauge coupling unification and hence in the masses of the heavy fields mediating the proton decay.
We focused on the minimal renormalizable non-supersymmetric SO(10) model with the 45 and 126 Higgses, where the Planck suppressed gauge kinetic form operators are absent due to the antisymmetry of the adjoint representation. Such scenario could provide a realistic breaking pattern and account for the neutrino masses. It has long been known that its tree-level spectrum suffers from tachyonicity, but by using the effective potential approach we managed to show that at the quantum level those masses receive substantial corrections and can become non-tachyonic. Establishing that the spectrum of the model is realistic is only the first step towards providing the first ever NLO computation of the corresponding proton lifetime in the future. I shall discuss our current results, comment on certain limits and mention some of the difficulties we have encountered.
Primary author
Timon Mede
(IPNP Charles University in Prague)
Co-authors
Lukaš Graf
(University College London)
Dr.
Michal Malinsky
(Charles University in Prague)
Dr.
Vasja Susič
(JSI Ljubljana)
