Unification without unification

Journal Article · Fri Jun 01 04:00:00 EDT 2001

OSTI ID:1155655

Weiner, N. ^[1]

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1. University of Washington, Seatle (United States)

The logarithmic running of the gauge couplings alpha_1, alpha_2 and alpha_3, indicates that they may unify at some scale M_GUT ~ 10^16. This is often taken to imply that the standard model gauge group is embedded into some larger simple group in which quarks and leptons are placed in the same multiplet. These models have generic features, such as proton decay, and generic problems, namely the splitting of the Higgs doublet and triplet. Inspired by the recent discusion of dimensional deconstruction, we propose an interesting alternative: we postulate a strongly coupled SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1), which is not the remnant of a GUT, and is Higgsed with a weakly coupled SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1), which is the remnant of a GUT, or with a GUT group directly, into the diagonal subgroup. In this ``collapsed GUT'' mechanism, unification of coupling constants in the low energy theory is expected, but proton decay and the doublet/triplet splitting problem are entirely absent.

• Research Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP) (SC-25)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-07CH11359
• OSTI ID: 1155655
• Report Number(s): FERMILAB-PUB--01-109-T
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS