Stringy surprises

Understand

There are many conceivable possibilities of embedding the MSSM in string theory.

• These proceedings describe an approach which is based on grand unification in higher dimensions.
• This allows one to obtain global string-derived models with the exact MSSM spectrum and built-in gauge coupling unification.
• It turns out that these models exhibit various appealing features such as (i) see-saw suppressed neutrino masses, (ii) an order one top Yukawa coupling and potentially realistic flavor structures, (iii) non-Abelian discrete flavor symmetries relaxing the supersymmetric flavor problem, (iv) a hidden sector whose scale of strong dynamics is consistent with TeV-scale soft masses, and (v) a solution to the mu-problem.