Proton Stability: From the Standard Model to Beyond Grand Unification

With the hypothesis that all independent degrees of freedom of basic building blocks should be treated equally on the same footing and correlated by a possible maximal symmetry, we arrive at an 4-dimensional space-time unification model. In this model the basic building blocks are Majorana fermions in the spinor representation of 14-dimensional quantum space-time with a gauge symmetry $G = SO(1,3)\times SU(32)\times U(1)_A \times SU(3)_F$. The model leads to new physics inclu...

It is noted that one is now in possession of a set of facts, which may be viewed as the matching pieces of a puzzle ; in that all of them can be resolved by just one idea - that is grand unification. These include : (i) the observed family-structure, (ii) quantization of electric charge, (iii) meeting of the three gauge couplings, (iv) neutrino oscillations; in particular the mass of $\nu_{\tau}$ suggested by SuperK), (v) the intricate pattern of the masses and mixings of the...

Standard lore uses local anomalies to check the kinematic consistency of gauge theories coupled to chiral fermions, e.g. Standard Models (SM). Based on a systematic cobordism classification, we examine constraints from invertible quantum anomalies (including all perturbative local and nonperturbative global anomalies) for gauge theories. We also clarify the different uses of these anomalies: including (1) anomaly cancellations of dynamical gauge fields, (2) 't Hooft anomaly m...

A review of baryon and lepton conservation in supersymmetric grand unified theories is given. Proton stability is discussed in the minimal SU(5) supergravity grand unification and in several non-minimal extensions such as the $SU(3)^3$, SO(10) and some string based models. Effects of dark matter on proton stability are also discussed and it is shown that the combined constraints of dark matter and proton stability constrain the sparticle spectrum. It is also shown that proton...

The Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) with conserved R-parity suffers from several fine-tuning problems, e.g. the mu-problem and the problem of proton decay through higher dimension operators. Both of these problems can be avoided by replacing R-parity with a non-anomalous U(1)' gauge symmetry which is broken at the TeV scale. The new gauge symmetry does not necessarily forbid all renormalizable R-parity violating interactions among the MSSM fields, and may allow f...

We construct SU(5) SUSY GUT in 5D compactified on S^1/Z_2 orbifold where the matter fields are living in the five dimensional bulk. SU(5) symmetry is broken down to the Standard Model gauge group by the orbifold projection which automatically ensures stability of proton in all orders of perturbation theory. The model predicts extra mirror quark-lepton families which along with the GUT particles and the excitations of extra dimensions could be observable at high energy collide...

Recently it was argued that proton lifetime limits impose that the scale of quantum gravity must be above 10^{16} GeV. By studying the proton stability in the context of realistic heterotic-string models, I propose that proton longevity necessitates the existence of an additional U(1)_{Z'} symmetry, which is of non-GUT origin and remains unbroken down to intermediate, or low, energies. It is shown that the realistic string models frequently give rise to U(1) symmetries, which...

In models with a low quantum gravity scale, one might expect that all operators consistent with gauge symmetries are present in the low-energy effective theory. If this is the case, some mechanism must be present to adequately suppress operators that violate baryon number. Here we explore the possibility that the desired suppression is a consequence of an additional, spontaneously-broken, non-anomalous U(1) symmetry that is orthogonal to hypercharge. We show that successful m...

We discuss baryon and lepton violation in the context of a simple 5-dimensional grand unified model, based on the orbifold S^1/(Z_2 x Z_2'). While gauge and Higgs degrees of freedom live in the bulk, matter is located on the boundaries of the space-time. We show that proton decay is naturally suppressed or even forbidden by suitable implementations of the parity symmetries in the matter sector. The corresponding mechanism does not affect the SU(5) description of fermion masse...

We construct a four-dimensional SU(5) grand unified theory in which the proton is stable. The Standard Model leptons reside in the 5 and 10 irreps of SU(5), whereas the quarks live in the 40 and 50 irreps. The SU(5) gauge symmetry is broken by the vacuum expectation values of the scalar 24 and 75 irreps. All non-Standard Model fields are heavy. Stability of the proton requires three relations between the parameters of the model to hold. However, abandoning the requirement of ...