Intermediate left-right gauge symmetry, unification of couplings and fermion masses in SUSY $SO(10)\times S_4$

Understand

If left-right gauge theory occurs as an intermediate symmetry in a GUT then, apart from other advantages, it is possible to obtain the see-saw scale necessary to understand small neutrino masses with Majorana coupling of order unity.

• Barring threshold or non-renormalizable gravitational effects, or assumed presence of additional light scalar particles of unprescribed origin, all other attempts to achieve manifest one-loop gauge coupling unification in SUSY SO(10) with left-right intermediate symmetry have not been successful so far.
• Attributing this failure to lack of flavor symmetry in the GUT, we show how the spontaneous symmetry breaking of $SO(10)\times S_4$ leads to such intermediate scale extending over a wide range, $M_R \simeq 5\times 10^{9}$ GeV to $10^{15}$ GeV.
• All the charged fermion masses are fitted at the see-saw scale, $M_N\simeq M_R \simeq 4 \times 10^{13}$ GeV which is obtained with Majorana coupling $f_0 \simeq 1$.