SO(10) Grand Unification with Minimal Dark Matter and Color Octet Scalars

TL;DR

This paper presents an SO(10) grand unified theory embedding minimal dark matter with specific scalar particles, ensuring stability via a remnant symmetry, and analyzes their phenomenological implications including collider prospects.

Contribution

It introduces a minimal SO(10) GUT model incorporating scalar dark matter and color-octet scalars, with detailed phenomenological constraints and stability mechanisms.

Findings

Scalar DM mass is 9.4 TeV, color-octet scalars are 2 TeV

Color-octet scalars production cross section is below current LHC bounds

Remnant Z2 symmetry stabilizes the dark matter candidate

Abstract

The minimal dark matter (MDM) scenario is a very simple framework of physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) to supplement the SM with a DM candidate. In this paper, we consider an ultraviolet completion of the scenario to an SO(10) grand unified theory, which is a well-motivated framework in light of the neutrino oscillation data. Considering various phenomenological constraints, such as the successful SM gauge coupling unification, the proton stability, and the direct/indirect DM detection constraints as well as the absolute electroweak vacuum stability, we have first singled out the minimal particle content of the MDM scenario at low energies. In addition to the SM particle content, our MDM scenario includes an SU(2)$_L$ quintet scalar DM with a 9.4 TeV mass and three degenerate color-octet scalars with mass of 2 TeV. We then have found a way to embed the minimal particle content into SO(10) representations, in which a remnant $Z_2$ symmetry after the SO(10) symmetry breaking ensures the stability of the DM particle. The production cross section of the color-octet scalars at the Large Hadron Collider is found to be a few orders of magnitude below the current experimental bound.