UNIVERSITY MENTOURI – CONSTANTINE

FACULTY OF EXACT SCIENCE

DIPARTEMENT OF PHYSICS
FIELD OF THEORETICAL PHYSICS

Grand Unified Theory and

Supersymmetry in Particle Physics
THESIS IN MASTER SCIENCE 1

OUDJERTNI Achraf

2019/2020
 Abstract
A review is given on the consistency checks of Grand Unified Theories GUT which unify the
electroweak and strong nuclear forces into a single theory. Such theories predict a new kind of
force which could provide answers to several open questions in Particle Physics.

Although such a force cannot be observed directly there are several predictions of GUT’s which
can be verified at low energies. The Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM)
distinguishes itself from other GUT’s by a successful prediction of many unrelated phenomena
with a minimum number of parameters

Among them a) Unification of the couplings constants b) Unification of the masses c) Existence
of dark matter d) Proton decay e) Electroweak symmetry breaking at a scale far below the
unification scale.

A fit of the free parameters in the MSSM to these low energy constraints predicts the masses of
the as yet unobserved superpartners of the SM particles, constrains the unknown top mass to a
range between and and requires the second order QCD coupling constant to be
between and .

I
Contents
Introduction 01

1. The Standard Model 05

1.1. introduction 05

1.2. The Standard Model 06

1.3. The Higgs Mechanism 11

2. Grand Unified Theories 18

2.1. Motivation 18

2.2. Grand Unification 18

2.3. ( ) predictions 20

2.4. Relations between Quark and Leptons Masses 22

3. Supersymmetry 24

3.1. Motivation 24

3.2. SUSY interaction 26

3.3. The SUSY Mass Spectrum 27

3.4. Electroweak Symmetry Breaking 28

4. Comparison of GUT’s with Experimental Date 30

Conclusion 32

References 35

II
Table List
 Table 1.1: The fundamental forces
 Table 1.2: The electro weak quantum numbers (electric charge , third
component of weak isospin and weak hypercharge ) of the particle
spectrum.

 Table 3.1: assignment of gauge fields to the vector superfield and the
matter fields to the chiral superfield.

Figures List
 Figure 1.1: Shape of the Higgs potential for (a) and (b);
and are the real and imaginary parts of the Higgs field.

 Figure 1.2: Running of the three coupling constants in the Standard Model
owing to the different space charge distributions

 Figure 2.1: GUT proton decays through the exchange of And Gauge
bosons.

 Figure 2.2: Radiative correction to particle masses

 Figure 3.1: Examples of proton decay in the minimal supersymmetric

model via wino and Higgsino exchange
 Figure: possible evolution of the radius of the universe and the coupling
constants. Before spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs, this
breaks the symmetry of the GUT into the well-known symmetries at low
energies.
In the meantime the universe inflates to a size far above the distance light
could have traveled as indicated by the dashed line.

III
 Acknowledgments

I want to thank sincerely professor N. Mebarki for this exciting field, and professor A. Benslama
and K. ait moussa for their collaboration in this subject by suggestion some books for
understand this subject, Without their enthusiasm and sharing of ideas my work could not be
done

IV
Introduction

The questions concerning the origin of our universe have long been thought of
as metaphysical and hence outside the realm of physics.

However, tremendous advances in experimental techniques to study both the

very large scale structures of the universe with space telescopes as well as the
tiniest building blocks of matter - the quarks and leptons - with large accelerators
allow us “to put things together”, so that the creation of our universe now has
become an area of active research in physics.

The two corner stones in this field are:

 Cosmology: the study of the large scale structure and the evolution of the
universe. Today the central questions are being explored in the framework
of the Big Bang Theory (BBT), which provides a satisfactory explanation
for the three basic observations about our universe: the Hubble expansion
the 2.7 K microwave background radiation, and the density of elements
(74% hydrogen, 24% helium and the rest for the heavy elements).
 Elementary Particle Physics: the study of the building blocks of matter
and the interactions between them. As far as we know, the building blocks
of matter are pointlike particles, the quarks and leptons, which can be
grouped according to certain symmetry principles; their interactions have
been codified in the so-called Standard Model (SM). In this model all
forces are described by gauge field theories, which form a marvelous
synthesis of Symmetry Principles and Quantum Field Theories. The latter
combine the classical field theories with the principles of Quantum
Mechanics and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

1
 The basic observations both in the Microcosm as well as in the Macrocosm are
well described by both models. Nevertheless, many questions remain unanswered.
Among them:

 What is the origin of mass?

 What is the origin of matter?
 What is the origin of the Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry in our universe?
 Why is our universe so smooth and isotropic on a large scale?
 Why is the ratio of photons to baryons in the universe so extremely large
on the order of ?
 What is the origin of dark matter which seems to provide the majority of
mass in our universe?
 Why are the strong forces so strong and the electroweak forces so weak?

Grand Unified Theories (GUT)are theories that combined all the three forces
(electromagnetic weak and strong nuclear forces) into a single theory, and hold the
promise of answering some of previous questions, for example they explain the
different strengths of the known forces by radiative corrections, at high energies all
forces are equally strong, the Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking (SSB) of a single
unified force into the electroweak and strong forces occurs in such theories through
scalar fields, which “lock” their phases over macroscopic distances below the
transition temperature.

Given the importance of the questions at stake GUT s have been under intense
investigation during the last years.

The two directly testable predictions of the simplest GUT namely the finite
lifetime of the proton and the unification of the three coupling constants of the
electroweak and strong forces at high energies

2
 Turned out to be a disaster for GUT’s. The proton was found to be much more
stable than predicted and from the precisely measured coupling constants at the
new electron-positron collider LEP at CERN in Geneva one had to conclude that
the couplings did not unify if extrapolated to high energies.

However it was shown later that by introducing a hitherto unobserved

symmetry, called Supersymmetry SUSY into the Standard Model, both problems
disappeared: unification was obtained and the prediction of the proton life time
could be pushed above the present experimental lower limit

The price to be paid for the introduction of SUSY is a doubling of the number
of elementary particles since it presupposes symmetry between fermions and
bosons i.e. Each particle with even (odd) spin has a partner with odd (even) spin.
These supersymmetric partners have not been observed in nature, so the only way
to save Supersymmetry is to assume that the predicted particles are too heavy to be
produced by present accelerators. However, there are strong theoretical grounds to
believe that they cannot be extremely heavy and in the minimal SUSY model, the
lightest so-called Higgs particle will be relatively light, which implies that it might
even be detectable by upgrading the present LEP accelerator, But SUSY particles if
they exist, should be observable in the next generation of accelerators, since mass
estimates from the unification of the precisely measured coupling constants are in
the TeV region.

It is the purpose of the present paper to discuss the experimental tests of

GUT’s. The following experimental constraints have been considered:

 Unification of the gauge coupling constants

 Unification of the Yukawa couplings
 Limits on proton decay

3
  Electroweak breaking scale
 Radiative decays
 Relic abundance of dark matter

It is surprising that one can find solutions within the minimal SUSY model,
which can describe all these independent results simultaneously. The constraints on
the couplings, the unknown top-quark mass and the masses of the predicted SUSY
particles will be discussed in detail.

The paper has been organized as follows:

- In chapters 01 to 03 the Standard Model, Grand Unified Theories (GUT) and

Supersymmetry are introduced.
- In chapter 04 the problems in cosmology will be discussed and why
cosmology “cries” for Supersymmetry.
- Finally in chapter 05 the consistency checks of GUT’s through comparison
with data are performed.
- In chapter 06 the results are summarized.

4
Chapter 01: The Standard Model

1.1. Introduction

The field of elementary has developed very rapidly during the last two
decades, after the success of QED as a gauge field theory of the electromagnetic
force could be extended to the weak and strong forces.

The success largely started with the November Revolution in 1974, when the
charmed quark was discovered simultaneously at SLAC and Brookhaven, for
which B. Richter and S.S.C Ting were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1976.

This discovery left little doubt that the pointlike constituents inside the proton
and other hadrons are real, existing quarks and not some mathematical objects to
classify the hadrons, as they were originally proposed by Gellman and
independently by Zweig.

The existence of the charmed quark paved the way for a symmetry between
quarks and leptons, since with charm one now had four quarks (u, d, c, s) and four
leptons ( ), which fitted nicely into the ( ) ( ) unified theory
of the electroweak interactions proposed by Glashow, Salam and Weinberg (GSW)
for the leptonic sector and extended to include quarks as well as leptons by
Glashow, Iliopoulos and Maiani (GIM) as early as 1970.

Actually, from the absence of flavor changing neutral currents, they predicted
the charm quark with a mass around 1-3 GeV and indeed the charmed quark was
found four years later with a mass of about 1.5 GeV. This discovery became known
as the November Revolution, mentioned above.

The unification of the electromagnetic and weak interactions had already been
forwarded by Schwinger and Glashow in the sixties. Weinberg and Salam solved

5
the problem of the heavy gauge boson masses, required in order to explain the short
range of the weak interactions, by introducing spontaneous symmetry breaking via
the Higgs mechanism. This introduced gauge boson masses without explicitly
breaking the gauge symmetry.

The Glashow Weinberg Salam theory led to three important predictions:

 Neutral currents: weak interactions without changing the electric charge.

In contrast to the charged currents the neutral currents could occur with
leptons from different generations in the initial state e.g.
through the exchange of a new neutral gauge boson.
 The prediction of the heavy gauge boson masses around 90 GeV.
 a scalar neutral particle, the Higgs boson

This chapter has been organized as follows: after a short description of the
SM, we discuss it shortcomings and unanswered questions. They form the
motivation for extending the SM towards a Grand Unified Theory, in which the
electroweak and strong forces are unified into a new force with only a single
coupling constant. The Grand Unified Theories will be discussed in the next
chapter. Although such unification can only happen at extremely high energies far
above the range of present accelerators it still has strong implications on low
energy physics, which can be tested at present accelerators.

1.2. The Standard Model

Constructing a gauge theory requires the following steps to be taken:

 Choice of a symmetry group on the basis of the symmetry of the observed

interactions.

6
  Requirement of local gauge invariance under transformations of the
symmetry group.
 Choice of the Higgs sector to introduce spontaneous symmetry breaking
which allows the generations of masses without breaking explicitly gauge
invariance. Massive gauge bosons are needed to obtain the short range
behavior of the weak interactions. Adding ad-hoc mass terms which are not
gauge invariant, leads to non-renormalizable field theories. In this case the
infinities of the theory cannot be absorbed in the parameters and fields of
the theory. With the Higgs mechanism the theory is indeed renormalizable
as was shown by Gerard 't Hooft
 Renormalization of the couplings and masses in the theory in order to
relate the bare charges of the theory to known data. The Renormalization
Group analysis leads to the concept of running i.e. energy dependent
coupling constants, which allows the absorption of infinities in the theory
into the coupling constants

Interactions
strong Electro-weak Gravitation Unified?
Theory QCD GSW Quantum gravity? SUGRA
Symmetry ( ) ( ) ( ) ? ( )
Gauge Photon, G X,Y?
bosons gluons bosons Graviton GUT bosons?
Charge Colour Weak isospin Mass ?
weak hypercharge
Table 1.1: The fundamental forces

The question mark indicates areas of intensive research.

7
1.2.1. Choice of the Group Structure.

Groups of particles observed in nature show very similar properties, thus

suggesting the existence of symmetries. For example, the quarks come in three
colours while the weak interactions suggest the grouping of fermions into doublets.
This leads naturally to the ( ) and ( ) group structure for the strong and
weak interactions respectively. The electromagnetic interactions don’t change the
quantum numbers of the interacting particles, so the simple ( ) group is sufficient

Consequently, the Standard Model of the strong and electroweak interactions

is based on the symmetry of the following unitary groups:

( ) ( ) ( )

The need for three colours arose in connection with the existence of hadrons
consisting of three quarks with identical quantum numbers. According to the Pauli
principle fermions are not allowed to be in the same state, More direct experimental
evidence for colour came from the decay width of the and the total hadronic
cross section in annihilation. Both are proportional to the number of quark
species and both require the number of colours to be three.

Although colour was introduced first as an ad-hoc quantum number for the
reasons given above, it became later evident that its role was much more
fundamental, namely that it acted as the source of the field for the strong
interactions (the “colour” field), just like the electric charge is the source of the
electric field.

The charge of the weak interactions is the third component of the weak isospin
. The charged weak interactions only operate on left-handed particles i.e.
particles with the spin aligned opposite to their momentum (negative helicity), so
only left-handed particles are given weak isospin and right-handed particles

8
are put into singlets (see table 1.2). Right-handed neutrinos do not exist in nature,
so within each generation one has 15 matter fields: 2(1) left (right)-handed leptons
and left (right)-handed quarks (factor 3 for colour).

The electromagnetic interactions originate both from the exchange of the

neutral gauge boson of the ( ) group as well as the one from the ( ) group.
Consequently the charge of the ( ) group cannot be identical with the electric
charge, but it is the so-called weak hypercharge , which is related to the electric
charge via the Gell-Mann-Nishijima relation:

The quantum number is ( ) for left- handed doublets and for

right-handed singlets, where the baryon number for quarks and 0 for leptons,

while the lepton number for leptons and 0 for quarks. Since and are
conserved, is also a conserved quantum number. The electro-weak quantum
numbers for the elementary particle spectrum are summarized in table:

9
 Generation Quantum Number

helicity 1. 2. 3.

. / . / . /

. / . / . /

Table 1.2: The electro weak quantum numbers (electric charge , third
component of weak isospin and weak hypercharge ) of the particle
spectrum.

10
1.3. The Higgs Mechanism.
1.3.1. Introduction
The problem of mass for the fermions and weak gauge bosons can be solved
by assuming that masses are generated dynamically through the interaction with
a scalar field, which is assumed to be present everywhere in the vacuum, i.e. the
space-time in which interactions take place.
The vacuum or equivalently the groundstate, i.e. the state with the lowest
potential energy, may have a non-zero (scalar) field value represented by
( ); is called the vacuum expectation value (vev). The same
minimum is reached for an arbitrary value of the phase , so there exists
an infinity of different, but equivalent groundstates. This degeneracy of the
ground state takes on a special significance in a quantum field theory because
the vacuum is required to be unique, so the phase cannot be arbitrarily at each
point in space-time. Once a particular value of the phase is chosen, it has to
remain the same everywhere, i.e. it cannot change locally. A scalar field with a
nonzero vev therefore breaks local gauge invariance more details can be found
in the nice introduction by Moriyasu.
Nature has many examples of broken symmetries. Superconductivity is a
well-known example. Below the critical temperature the electrons bind into
Cooper pairs.
The density of Cooper pairs corresponds to the vev. Owing to the weak
binding, the effective size of a Cooper pair is large about , so every
Cooper pair overlaps with about other Cooper pairs and this overlap
“locks” the phases of the wave function over macroscopic distances
“Superconductivity is a remarkable manifestation of Quantum Mechanics
on a truly macroscopic scale”
In the superconducting phase the photon gets an effective mass through
the interaction with the Cooper pairs in the “vacuum” which is apparent in the
Meissener effect: the magnetic field has a very short penetration depth into the
superconductor or equivalently the photon is very massive. Before the phase
transition the vacuum would have zero Cooper pairs, i.e. a zero vev, and the
magnetic field can penetrate the superconductor without attenuation as
expected for massless photons

11
Figure 1.1: Shape of the Higgs potential for (a) and (b);
and are the real and imaginary parts of the Higgs field.
This example of Quantum Mechanics and spontaneous symmetry breaking
in superconductivity has been transferred almost literally to elementary particle
physics by Higgs and others. For the self-interaction of the Higgs field one
considers a potential analogous to the one proposed by Ginzburg and Landau
for superconductivity:
( ) ( )
Where and are constants. The potential has a parabolic shape, if
but takes the shape of a Mexican hat for as pictured in fig 2.3.
In the latter case the field free vacuum, i.e. , corresponds to a local
maximum, thus forming an unstable equilibrium. The groundstate corresponds
to a minimum with a nonzero value for the f i eld:

| | √

In superconductivity acts like the critical temperature : above the

electrons are free particles, so their phases can be rotated arbitrarily at all points in
space, but below the individual rotational freedom is lost because the
electrons form a coherent system, in which all phases are locked to a certain
value. This corresponds to a single point in the minimum of the Mexican hat
which represents a vacuum with a nonzero vev and a well- defined phase
thus defining a unique vacuum. The coherent system can still be rotated as a
whole, so it is invariant under global but not under local rotations.
12
1.3.2. Gauge Boson Masses and the Top Quark Mass.
After this general introduction about the Higgs mechanism, one has to
consider the number of Higgs fields needed to break the ( ) ( )
symmetry to the ( ) symmetry. The latter must have one massless gauge
boson while the W and Z bosons must be massive. This can be achieved by
choosing to be a complex ( ) doublet with definite hypercharge 1
( ) ( )
( ) ( )
( ) ( )
In order to understand the interaction of the Higgs field with other
particles, one considers the following Lagrangian for a scalar field:
( ) ( ) ( )
The first term is the usual kinetic energy term for a scalar particle, for which
the Euler Lagrange equations lead to the Klein Gordon equation of motion.
Instead of the normal derivative, the covariant derivative is used in equation, in
order to ensure local gauge invariance under ( ) ( ) rotations
The vacuum is known to be neutral Therefore the groundstate of has to
be of the form (0,v). Furthermore ( ) has to be constant everywhere in order
to have zero kinetic energy i.e. the derivative term in disappears.
The quantum fluctuations of the field around the ground state can be
parameterized as follows if we include an arbitrary ( ) phase factor.
( )
( )
( )
The (real) fields ( ) are excitations of the field along the potential
minimum. They correspond to the massless Goldstone bosons of a global
symmetry, in this case three for the three rotations of the ( ) group.
However in a local gauge theory these massless bosons can be eliminated by a
suitable rotation
( )
( ) ( )
( )
Consequently the field has no physical significance. Only the real field
( ) can be interpreted as a real Higgs particle. The original field with four
degrees of freedom has lost three degrees of freedom; these are recovered as
the longitudinal polarizations of the three heavy gauge bosons.
The kinetic part of equation of Lagrangian gives rise to mass terms for the
vector bosons which can be written as ( =1):

13
 0. ( )/ 1 ,( ( ) ) -

Or substitution for Its vacuum expectation value one obtains from the off-
diagonal terms (by writing the Matrices explicitly)

. / .( ) ( ) /

And from the diagonal terms:

( )( )( ) ( )( )( ). /

Since mass terms of physical fields have to be diagonal, one obtains the “physical”
gauge fields of the broken symmetry by diagonalizing the mass term:

( ) . /

Where represents a unitary matrix

( ) ( )
√
Consequently the real fields become a mixture of the gauge fields:

. / . /

and the matrix becomes a diagonal matrix for a suitable mixing angle .
In these fields the mass terms have the form

( )( ) . /

With

Here is the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs potential, which for the
known gauge boson masses and couplings can be calculated to be:

The neutral part of the Lagrangian, if expressed in terms of the physical fields
can be written as:

14
 [ ( ̅ ̅ ̅ ) (̅ ̅ )]

[ ( ̅ ̅ ̅ ) (̅ ̅ )]

The photon field should only couple to the electron fields and not to the
neutrinos, so the terms proportional to and should cancel and
the coupling to the electrons has to be the electric charge . This can be achieved
by requiring:

Hence

From these relations and the relations between masses and couplings one
finds the famous relation between the electroweak mixing angle and the gauge
boson

The value of can also be related to the precisely measured muon decay
constant If calculated in the SM one finds:

√
This relation can be used to calculate the gauge boson masses from measured
coupling constants :

√
Inserting and yields . However
these relations are only at tree level. Radiative corrections depend on the as yet
unknown top mass. Fitting the unknown top mass to the measured mass, the
electroweak asymmetries and the cross sections at LEP yields:
( ) ( )

15
 Also the fermions can interact with the scalar field, albeit not necessarily with
the gauge coupling constant. The Lagrangian for the interaction of the leptons with
the Higgs field can be written as:
,̅ ̅ -
Substituting the vacuum expectation value for yields
̅
[( ̅ ̅ ). / ̅ ( ) ( )] , ̅ ̅ - ̅
√ ̅ √ √
The Yukawa coupling constant is a free parameter, which has to be
adjusted such that √ . Thus the coupling is proportional to the mass
of the particle and consequently the coupling of the Higgs field to fermions is
proportional to the mass of the fermion, a prediction of utmost importance to the
experimental search for the Higgs boson.
Note that the neutrino stays massless with the choice of the Lagrangian since
no mass term for the neutrino appears in the last equation.
1.3.3. Summary on the Higgs mechanism
In summary, the Higgs mechanism assumed the existence of a scalar field
( ( )). After spontaneous symmetry breaking the phases are
“locked” over macroscopic distances so the field averaged over all phases is not
zero anymore and develops a vacuum expectation value. The interaction of the
fermions and gauge bosons with this coherent system of scalar fields gives rise
to effective particle masses just like the interaction of the electromagnetic field
with the Cooper pairs inside a superconductor can be described by an effective
photon mass.
The vacuum corresponds to the groundstate with minimal potential energy and
zero kinetic energy At high enough temperatures the thermal fluctuations of the
Higgs particles about the groundstate become so strong that the coherence is lost
i.e. ( ) is not true anymore. In other words a phase transition from
the groundstate with broken symmetry ( ) to the symmetric groundstate takes
place. In the symmetric phase the groundstate is invariant again under local ( )
rotations, since the phases can be adjusted locally without changing the groundstate
with 〈 〉 In the latter case all masses disappear, since they are proportional to
〈 〉 .
Both, the fermion and gauge boson masses are generated through the
interaction with the Higgs field. Since the interactions are proportional to the
coupling constants one finds a relation between masses and coupling constants. For
the fermions the Yukawa coupling constant is proportional to the fermion mass and

16
the mass ratio of the and bosons is only dependent on the electroweak mixing
angle. This mass relation is in excellent agreement with experimental data after
including radiative corrections. Hence it is the first indirect evidence that the gauge
bosons masses are indeed generated by the interaction with a scalar field since
otherwise there is no reason to expect the masses of the charged and neutral gauge
bosons to be related in such a specific way via the couplings.

Figure 1.2: Running of the three coupling constants in the Standard Model
owing to the different space charge distributions

17
Chapter 02: Grand Unified Theories

2.1. Motivation
The standard model describes all observed interactions between elementary
particles with astonishing precision Nevertheless it cannot be considered to be the
ultimate theory because the many unanswered questions remain a problem. Among
them:
 The Gauge Problem
Why are there three independent symmetry groups?
 The Parameter Problem
How can one reduce the number of free parameters? (At least 18 from the
couplings, the mixing parameters, the Yukawa couplings and the Higgs Potential.)
 The Fermion Problem
Why are there three generations of quarks and leptons What is the origin of
the the symmetry between quarks and leptons Are they composite particles of more
fundamental objects
 The Charge Quantization Problem
Why do protons and electrons have exactly opposite electric charges
 The Hierarchy Problem
Why is the weak scale so small compared with the GUT scale, i.e. why is
?
 The Fine-tuning Problem
Radiative corrections to the Higgs masses and gauge boson masses have
quadratic divergences. For example ( ). In other words the
corrections to the Higgs masses are many orders of magnitude larger than the
masses themselves since they are expected to be of the order of the electroweak
gauge boson masses. This requires extremely unnatural ne tuning in the parameters
of the Higgs potential. This “fine-tuning” problem is solved in the supersymmetric
extension of the SM, as will be discussed afterwards.
2.2. Grand Unification
The problems mentioned above can be partly solved by assuming the
symmetry groups ( ) ( ) ( ) are part of a larger group , i.e.
( ) ( ) ( )

18
 The smallest group is the ( ) group, so the minimal extension of the SM
towards a GUT is based on the ( ) group. Throughout this paper we will only
consider this minimal extension. The group has a single coupling constant for all
interactions and the observed differences in the couplings at low energy are caused
by radiative corrections. As discussed before the strong coupling constant decreases
with increasing energy while the electromagnetic one increases with energy so that
at some high energy they will become equal. Since the changes with energy are
only logarithmic the unification scale is high namely of the order of
depending on the assumed particle content in the loop diagrams.
In the ( ) group the particles and antiparticles of the first generation can be
fit into the ̅ and :

̅
√
( ) ( )
The superscript indicates the charge conjugated particle, i.e. the antiparticle
and all particles are chosen to be left-handed, since a left-handed antiparticle
transforms like a right handed particle. Thus the superscript implies a right-
handed singlet with weak isospin equal zero.
With this multiplet structure the sum of the quantum numbers is
zero within one multiplet as required since the corresponding operators are
represented by traceless matrices.
Note that there is no space for the antineutrino in these multiplets so within the
minimal ( ) the neutrino must be massless since for a massive particle the right-
handed helicity state is also present. Of course, it is possible to put a right-handed
neutrino into a singlet representation
( ) rotations can be represented by matrices. Local gauge invariance
requires the introduction of gauge fields (the “mediators”), which
cause the interactions between the matter fields. The gauge fields transform under
the adjoint representation of the ( ) group, which can be written in matrix form
as

19
 √

√ √

(( √ √ ))
The represent the gluon fields of equation while the and are the gauge
fields of the ( ) symmetry groups. The and are new gauge bosons which
represent interactions in which quarks are transformed into leptons and vice versa
as should be apparent if one operates with this matrix on the ̅ .
Consequently, the ( ) bosons, which couple to the electron (neutrino) and d-
quark must have electric charge . /.

2.3. ( ) predictions
 Proton decay
The and gauge bosons can introduce transitions between quarks and
leptons, thus violation lepton and baryon number. This can lead to the following
proton and neutron decays:

Figure 2.1: GUT proton decays through the exchange of And Gauge
bosons.

̅
̅ ̅
̅

20
 ̅
The decays with kaons in the final state are allowed through flavour mixing,
i.e. the interaction eigenstates are not necessarily the mass eigenstates
For the lifetime of the nucleon one writes in analogy to muon decay:

The proton mass to the fifth power originates from the phase space in case
the final states are much lighter than the proton, which is the case for the dominant
decay mode : . After this prediction of an unstable proton in grand
unified theories a great deal of activity developed and the lower limit on the proton
life time increased to:

for the dominant decay mode . .

From the extrapolation of the couplings in the ( ) model to high energies

one expects the unification scale to be reached well below so the proton
lifetime measurements exclude the minimal ( ) model as a viable GUT. As will
be discussed later the supersymmetric extension of the ( ) model has the
unification point well above .
 Baryon asymmetry
The heavy gauge bosons responsible for the unified force cannot be produced
with conventional accelerators, but energies above were easily accessible
during the birth of our universe. This could have led to an excess of matter over
antimatter right at the beginning since the and bosons can decay into pure
matter, e.g. which is allowed because the charge of the boson is . As
pointed out by Sakharov such an excess is possible if both C and CP are violated if
the baryon number is violated and if the process goes through a phase of non-
equilibrium. All three conditions are possible within the ( ) model. The non-
equilibrium phase happens if the hot universe cools down and arrives at a
temperature too low to generate and bosons anymore so only the decays are
possible. Since the CP violation is expected to be small the excess of matter over
antimatter will be small, so most of the matter annihilated with antimatter into
enormous number of photons. This would explain why the number of photons over
baryons is so large:

21
 However, later it was realized that the electroweak phase transition may wash
out any excess generated by GUT’s. One then has to explain the observed
baryon asymmetry by the electroweak baryogenesis, which is actively studied.
 Charge Quantization
From the fact that quarks and leptons are assigned to the same multiplet the
charges must be related, since the trace of any generator has to be zero. For
example, the charge operator on the fundamental representation yields:
( )
or in other words, in ( ) the electric charge of the -quark has to be of
the charge of an electron. Similarly, one finds the charge of the -quark is of the
positron charge so the total charge of the proton has to be exactly opposite
to the charge of an electron.
2.4. Relations between Quark and Lepton Masses
The Higgs 5-pelt can be used to generate fermion masses. Since the
̅ of the matter fields contains both leptons and down-type quarks their
masses are related while the up-type quark masses are free parameters. At the GUT
scale one expects:

Unfortunately the masses of the light quarks have large uncertainties from the
binding energies in the hadrons but the -quark mass can be correctly predicted
from the -mass after including radiative corrections.
Since the corrections from graphs involving the strong coupling constant
are dominant, one expects in first order.
( )
( ) ( )
( )

22
Figure 2.2: Radiative correction to particle masses

23
Chapter 03: Supersymmetry
3.1. Motivation
Supersymmetry presupposes a symmetry between fermions and bosons, which
can be realized in nature only if one assumes each particle with spin has a
supersymmetric partner with spin . This leads to a doubling of the particle
spectrum, which are assigned to two supermultiplets: the vector multiplet for the
gauge bosons and the chiral multiplet for the matter fields. Unfortunately the
supersymmetric particles or “sparticles” have not been observed so far so either
supersymmetry is an elegant idea, which has nothing to do with reality, or
supersymmetry is not an exact symmetry, in which case the sparticles can be
heavier than the particles. Many people opt for the latter way out, since there are
many good reasons to believe in supersymmetry:
 SUSY solves the fine-tuning problem
As mentioned before, the radiative corrections in the ( ) model have quadratic
divergences, which lead to ( ), where is a cutoff scale, typically
the unification scale if no other scales introduce new physics beforehand .
However, in SUSY the loop corrections contain both fermions ( ) and bosons ( )
in the loops, which according to the Feynman rules contribute
VECTOR MULTIPLET CHIRAL MULTIPLET

̃ ̃ ̃ ̃
̃ ̃ ̃ ̃
̃ ̃ ̃
Table 3.1: assignment of gauge fields to the vector superfield and the matter
fields to the chiral superfield.
With an opposite sign, i.e.
( )| | ( )
Where is a typical SUSY mass scale. In other words the fine-tuning problem
disappears, if the SUSY partners are not too heavy compared with the known
fermions. An estimate of the required SUSY breaking scale can be obtained by
considering that the masses of the weak gauge bosons and Higgs masses are both
obtained by multiplying the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field with a

24
coupling constant, so one expects Requiring that the radiative
corrections are not much larger than the masses themselves, i.e. or
replacing by , ( )

 Unification with gravity

The space-time symmetry group is the Poincare group. Requiring local gauge
invariance under the transformations of this group leads to the Einstein theory of
gravitation. Localizing both the internal and the space-time symmetry groups yields
the Yang-Mills gauge fields and the gravitational fields. This paves the way for the
unification of gravity with the strong and electroweak interactions. The only non-
trivial unification of an internal symmetry and the space-time symmetry group is
the supersymmetry group, so supersymmetric theories automatically include
gravity. Unfortunately supergravity models are inherently non-renormalizable,
which prevents up to now clear predictions. Nevertheless the spontaneous
symmetry breaking of supergravity is important for the low energy spectrum of
supersymmetry. The most common scenario is the hidden sector scenario in which
one postulates two sectors of fields the visible sector containing all the particles of
the GUT’s described before and the hidden sector, which contains fields which lead
to symmetry breaking of supersymmetry at some large scale . One assumes
that none of the fields in the hidden sector contains quantum numbers of the visible
sector, so the two sectors only communicate via gravitational interactions.
Consequently, the effective scale of supersymmetry breaking in the visible sector is
suppressed by a power of the Planck scale i.e.

Figure 3.1: Examples of proton decay in the minimal supersymmetric model

via wino and Higgsino exchange
Where is model-dependent (e.g. in the Polonyi model). Thus the SUSY
breaking scale can be large above, while still producing a small breaking
scale in the visible sector. In this case the fine-tuning problem can be avoided in a

25
natural way and it is gratifying to see that the first experimental hints for are
indeed in the mass range consistent with

The hidden sector scenario leads to an effective low energy theory with explicit soft
breaking terms where soft implies that no new quadratic divergences are generated.
The soft-breaking terms in string inspired supergravity models have been studied
recently in refs. A final theory which simultaneously solves the cosmological
constant problem and explains the origin of supersymmetry breaking needs
certainly a better understanding of superstring theory.
 The unification scale in SUSY is large
As discussed in chapter 2, the limits on the proton lifetime require the unification
scale to be above , which is the case for the MSSM. In addition, one has
to consider proton decay. These yield a strong constraint on the mixing in the Higgs
sector.
 Prediction of dark matter
The lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) cannot decay into normal matter
because of R-parity conservation. In addition R-parity forbids a coupling between
the LSP and normal matter.
Consequently, the LSP is an ideal candidate for dark matter which is believed to
account for a large fraction of all mass in the universe. The mass of the dark matter
particles is expected to be below one .
3.2. SUSY Interaction
The quantum numbers and the gauge couplings of the particles and sparticles
have to be the same, since they belong to the same multiplet structure.
The interaction if the sparticles with normal matter is governed by a new
multiplicative quantum number called R-parity which is needed in order to prevent
baryon and lepton number violation. Remember that quarks leptons and Higgses
are all contained in the same chiral supermultiplet which allows couplings between
quarks and leptons. Such transitions which could lead to rapid proton decay are not
observed in nature. Therefore the SM particles are assigned a positive R-parity and
the supersymmetric partners are R-odd. Requiring R-parity conservation implies
that:
 Sparticles can be produced only in pairs

26
  The lightest supersymmetric particle is stable, since its decay into normal
matter would change R-parity.
 The interactions of particles and sparticles can be different. For example
the photon couples to electron-positron pairs but the photino does not
couple to selectron-spositron pairs since in the latter case the R-parity
would change from to .
3.3. The SUSY Mass Spectrum
Obviously SUSY cannot be an exact symmetry of nature; or else the
supersymmetric partners would have the same mass as the normal particles. As
mentioned above, the supersymmetric partners should be not too heavy, since
otherwise the hierarchy problem reappears.
Furthermore, if one requires that the breaking terms do not introduce quadratic
divergences, only the so-called soft breaking terms are allowed.
Using the supergravity inspired breaking terms which assume a common mass
for the gauginos and another common mass for the scalars, leads to the
following breaking term in the Lagrangian:

∑| | ∑

[ ] , -
Here
are the Yukawa coupling, run over the generations
are the ( ) doublet quark fields
are the ( ) singlet charge-conjugated up-quark fields
are the ( ) singlet charge-conjugated down-quark fields
are the ( ) doublet lepton fields
are the ( ) singlet charge-conjugated lepton fields
are the ( ) doublet Higgs fields
are all scalar fields
are the gaugino fields
The last two terms in originate from the cubic and quadratic terms
in the superpotential with and as free parameters. In total we now have three
coupling and five mass parameters.

27
3.4. Electroweak Symmetry Breaking
The coupling plays an important role in the shape of the potential and
consequently in the pattern of electroweak symmetry breaking, which occurs if the
minimum of the potential is not obtained for 〈 〉 〈 〉 . In the SM this
condition could be introduced ad-hoc by requiring the coefficient of the quadratic
term to be negative. In supersymmetry this term is restricted by the gauge
couplings. A non-trivial minimum can only be obtained by the soft breaking terms,
if the mass matrix for the Higgs sector, given by , has a negative
eigenvalue. This is obtained if the determinant is negative.
( ) ( ) | ( )|
In order that the new minimum is below the trivial minimum with 〈 〉
〈 〉 , one has to require in addition ( ) ( ) ( ) which
is fulfilled if
( ) ( ) | ( )|
If one compares last two equations will realize that these conditions cannot be
fulfilled simultaneously at least not at the GUT scale.
However, at lower energies there are substantial radiative corrections, which
can cause differences between and , since the first one involves mass
corrections proportional to the top Yukawa coupling ( ), while for the latter
these corrections are proportional to the bottom Yukawa coupling. From the RGE
for the mass parameters in the Higgs potential one finds at the weak scale:
( ) ( )
( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

The coefficients were evaluated for the parameters of the fit to the
experimental data. The explicit dependence of the coefficients on the coupling
constants is given in the appendix. The coefficients of the last three terms in
depend on the top Yukawa coupling. This dependence disappears if the masses of
the stop and top quarks are equal. Since is expected to be small, the dominant
negative contribution is proportional to , so the electroweak breaking scale is a
sensitive function of both the initial conditions the top Yukawa coupling and the
gaugino masses.

28
The minimum of the potential can be found by requiring:

( )
| |

( )
| |
Here we substituted
〈 〉 〈 〉
Where
( )

From the minimization conditions given above one can derive easily:

* +
( )( )

29
 Chapter 4: Comparison of GUT’s with Experimental
Data
The most restrictive constraints are the coupling constant unification
combined with the lower limits on the proton lifetime. They exclude the SM as well
as many other models with either a more complicated Higgs sector or models in
which one searches for the minimum number of new particles required to fulfil the
constraints mentioned above. From the many models tried only a few yielded
unification at the required energies, but these models have particles introduced ad-
hoc without the appealing properties of Supersymmetry. Therefore we will
concentrate here on the supersymmetric models and ask if the predictions of the
simplest i.e. minimal models are consistent with all the constraints described in the
previous chapters. Assuming soft symmetry breaking at the GUT scale all SUSY
masses can be expressed in terms of parameters and the masses at low energies
are then determined by the well-known Renormalization Group RG equations. So
many parameters cannot be derived from the unification condition alone. However,
further constraints can be considered:
 predicted from electroweak symmetry breaking
 -quark mass predicted from the unification of Yukawa
 Constraints from the lower limit on the proton lifetime
 Constraints on the relic density in the universe
 Constraints on the top mass
 Experimental lower limits on SUSY masses
 Constraints from decays
Of course in many of the references given above,several constraints are
studied simultaneously, since considering one constraint at a time yields only one
relation between parameters. Trying to find complete solutions with only a few
constraints requires then additional assumptions, like naturalness no scale models,
fixed ratios for gaugino and scalar masses or a fixed ratio for the Higgs mixing
parameter and the scalar mass or combinations of these assumptions.
Several ways to study the constraints simultaneously have been pursued. One
can either sample the whole parameter space in a systematic or random way or
check the regions which are allowed by the experimental constraints.
Alternatively one can try a statistical analysis in which all the constraints are
implemented in a definition and try to find the most probable region of the
parameter space by minimizing the function.
In the first case one has to ask which weight one should give to the various
regions of parameter space and how large is the parameter space? Some sample the

30
space only logarithmically thus emphasizing the low energy regions, others provide
a linear sampling. In the second case one is faced with the difficulty that the
function to be minimized is not monotonous, because of the experimental limits on
the particle masses, proton lifetime, and relic density and so on. At the transitions
where these constraints become effective the derivative of the function is not
defined. Fortunately, good minimizing programs in multidimensional parameter
space, which do not rely on the derivatives, exist. The advantage of such a
statistical analysis is that one obtains probabilities for the allowed regions of the
parameter space and can calculate confidence levels. The results of such an analysis
will be presented after a short description of the experimental input values. Other
analysis have obtained similar mass spectra for the predicted particles in the MSSM
or extended versions of the MSSM.

31
Conclusion
Many of the questions posed by cosmology suggest phase transitions during
the evolution of the universe from the Planck temperature of K to the K
observed today. Among them the baryon asymmetry in our universe and in flation
which is the only viable solution to explain the horizon problem, the flatness
problem, the magnetic monopole problem and the smoothness problem
In Grand Unified Theories (GUT) phase transitions are expected: one at the
unification scale of at a temperature of about K and one at the
electroweak scale i.e. at a temperature of about K. Furthermore, scalar fields
which are a prerequisite for inflation are included in GUT’s. In the minimal model
at least scalar fields are required. Unfortunately, none have been discovered so far,
so little is known about the scalar sector, although the verification of the relation
between the couplings and the masses of the electroweak gauge bosons indeed are
indirect evidence that their mass is generated by the interaction with a scalar field.
Experimental observation of these scalar fields would provide a great boost for
cosmology and particle physics. First estimates of the required mass spectra of the
scalar fields can be obtained by comparing the experimental consequences of
Grand Unified Theories (GUT) with low energy phenomenology
One of the interesting discoveries of LEP was the fact that within the Standard
Model (SM) unification of the gauge couplings could be excluded. In contrast the
minimal supersymmetric extension of the SM (MSSM) provided perfect
unification. This observation boosted the interest in Supersymmetry enormously
especially since the MSSM was not designed to provide unification but it was
invented many years ago and turned out to have very interesting properties.
 Supersymmetry automatically provides gravitational interactions. thus
paving the road for a “Theory Of Everything”.
 The symmetry between bosons and fermions alleviates the divergences in
the radiative corrections in which case these corrections can be made
responsible for the electroweak symmetry breaking at a much lower scale
than the GUT scale.
 The lightest supersymmetric partner (LSP) is a natural candidate for
nonrelativistic dark matter in our universe.
The minimal supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) has many predictions
which can be compared with experiment even in the energy range where the
predicted SUSY particles are out of reach. Among these predictions:



32
  Proton decay
 Dark matter
Of course, a quantum description of space-time can be discussed only in the
context of quantum gravity, so these ideas must be considered speculative until a
renormalizable theory of quantum gravity is formulated and proven by experiment.
Nevertheless, it is fascinating to contemplate that physical laws may determine not
only the evolution of our universe but they may remove also the need for
assumptions about the initial conditions.
From the experimental constraints at low energies the mass spectra for the
SUSY particles can be predicted. The lightest Higgs particle is certainly within
reach of experiments at present or future accelerators. Its observation in the
predicted mass range of to would be a strong case in support of this
minimal version of the supersymmetric grand unified theory. Discovering also the
heavier SUSY particles implies that the known strong electromagnetic and weak
forces were all unified into a single “primeval” force during the birth of our
universe. Future experiments will tell!

33
Figure: possible evolution of the radius of the universe and the coupling
constants. Before spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs, this
breaks the symmetry of the GUT into the well-known symmetries at low
energies.
In the meantime the universe inflates to a size far above the distance light
could have traveled as indicated by the dashed line.

34
References

 G.Borner, The early Universe Springer Verlag (1991).

 E.W.Kolb and M.S.Turner, The early Universe Addison-Wesley (1990)

 G.G.Ross, Grand Uni ed Theories (Addison-Wesley Publishing Company,

Reading MA (1984)

 P Langacker, Phys Rep. 72 (1987)

 G.Degrassi, S.Fanchiotti, A.Sirlin, Nucl Phys B351 (1991)

 P.Langacker, N.Polonsky, Phys Rev D47 (1993)

 J.E Bj-orkman and D.R.I. Jones, Nucl. Phys.

B259 (1984) and references therein

 M.Fischler and J.Oliensis, Phys. Lett. 119 B (1982)

35