Enhancement of Proton Decay Rates in Supersymmetric SU(5) Grand Unified Models

TL;DR

This paper examines how different particle content scenarios in supersymmetric SU(5) GUTs affect proton decay rates, revealing significant reductions or slight prolongations in proton lifetime depending on the model specifics.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of proton decay rates in SUSY GUTs considering extra vector-like multiplets and heavy sfermions, highlighting their impact on proton lifetime predictions.

Findings

Proton lifetime is significantly reduced with extra vector-like multiplets.

Proton lifetime is slightly prolonged with heavy sfermions.

Particle content and mass spectrum are crucial for accurate proton decay predictions.

Abstract

In the supersymmetric grand unified theories (SUSY GUTs), gauge bosons associated with the unified gauge group induce proton decay. We investigate the proton decay rate via the gauge bosons in the SUSY GUTs under the two situations; one is with extra vector-like multiplets, and the other is with heavy sfermions. It is found that the proton lifetime is significantly reduced in the former case, while in the latter case it is slightly prolonged. Determination of the particle contents and their mass spectrum below the GUT scale is important to predict the proton lifetime. The proton decay searches have started to access to the 10^16 GeV scale.