2012

Coupling Unification, GUT-Scale Baryogenesis and Neutron-Antineutron Oscillation in SO(10)

Babu, K. S., Mohapatra, R. N.

Understand

We show that unification of the three gauge couplings can be realized consistently in a class of non-supersymmetric SO(10) models with a one-step breaking to the Standard Model if a color-sextet scalar field survives down to the TeV scale.

  • Such scalars, which should be accessible to the LHC for direct detection, arise naturally in SO(10) as remnants of the seesaw mechanism for neutrino masses.
  • The diquark couplings of these scalars lead to \Delta B = 2 baryon number violating processes such as neutron-antineutron oscillation.
  • We estimate the free neutron-antineutron transition time to be \tau_{n-\bar{n}} \approx (10^9-10^{12}) sec., which is in the interesting range for next generation n-\bar{n} oscillation experiments.

Reading the bibliography…