Predictive power of grand unification from quantum gravity

TL;DR

This paper explores how a quantum gravity framework could fix parameters in grand unified theories, making the symmetry-breaking pattern predictable by analyzing the fixed points of couplings.

Contribution

It proposes that quantum gravity fixed points can determine GUT scalar potential parameters, leading to predictive symmetry-breaking patterns.

Findings

Quartic couplings are fixed at the quantum gravity fixed point.

These couplings are irrelevant parameters, thus computable from particle content.

Spontaneous symmetry breaking direction becomes predictable from fixed points.

Abstract

If a grand-unified extension of the asymptotically safe Reuter fixed-point for quantum gravity exists, it determines free parameters of the grand-unified scalar potential. All quartic couplings take their fixed-point values in the trans-Planckian regime. They are irrelevant parameters that are, in principle, computable for a given particle content of the grand unified model. In turn, the direction of spontaneous breaking of the grand-unified gauge symmetry becomes predictable. For the flow of the couplings below the Planck mass, gauge and Yukawa interactions compete for the determination of the minimum of the effective potential.