Unravelling the Scalar Sector of Grand Unification: Phenomenology & Implications

TL;DR

This paper systematically analyzes the scalar sector in grand unified theories, exploring their couplings, phenomenological implications, and constraints from experimental data, to better understand their role in particle physics and cosmology.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of scalar couplings, phenomenology, and constraints in GUTs, including novel insights into lifting fermion mass degeneracies via quantum corrections.

Findings

Identified scalar couplings to SM fermions and their roles in baryon number violation.

Estimated scalar mass constraints from nucleon decay and related processes.

Demonstrated quantum corrections can resolve fermion mass degeneracies in minimal SU(5).

Abstract

Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) based on groups like $SO(10)$ and $SU(5)$ unify Standard Model (SM) fermions into irreducible representations (irreps), and predict additional scalar fields beyond the SM Higgs. In $SO(10)$ GUTs, the scalar fields can arise from irreps contributing to the Yukawa sector at the renormalisable level, such as $10_{\mathrm{H}}$, $120_{\mathrm{H}}$, and $\overline{126}_{\mathrm{H}}$, or from $16_{\mathrm{H}}$ in non-renormalisable interactions. The direct implications of these scalars include the violation of baryon and lepton number, enabling processes such as nucleon decays, neutron-antineutron oscillation, and potentially accounting for the observed baryon asymmetry of the universe. We systematically analyse their couplings to SM fermions, identifying diquark and leptoquark interactions vertices involving all scalars residing in $10_{\mathrm{H}}$, $120_{\mathrm{H}}$, $\overline{126}_{\mathrm{H}}$, and $16_{\mathrm{H}}$ and comprehensively assess their contributions to nucleon decay, neutron-antineutron oscillation, quark flavour violation, and baryogenesis. Constraints on the masses of these scalars, derived from experimental bounds on the aforementioned processes, are also estimated. Conventional GUTs rely on multiple scalar irreps to avoid unrealistic fermion mass relations; for example, minimal $SU(5)$ with $5_{\mathrm{H}}$ predicts degenerate down-quark and charged-lepton masses. We demonstrate that quantum corrections from heavy scalars in a minimally extended $SU(5)$ model can lift this degeneracy, thereby reducing the arbitrariness in the scalar sector, which has been called as indirect impact. This thesis provides a comprehensive examination of the scalar sector's role in GUTs, establishing connections between UV-complete models and observable phenomena.