Realizing unification in two different SO(10) models with one intermediate breaking scale

Abstract

We derive the threshold corrections in $\mathrm{SO}(10)$ grand unified models with the intermediate symmetry being flipped $\mathrm{SU}(5)\times \mathrm{U}(1)$ or $\mathrm{SU}(3)\times \mathrm{SU}(2)\times \mathrm{U}(1)\times \mathrm{U}(1)$, with the masses of the scalar fields set by the survival hypothesis. These models do not achieve gauge coupling unification if the matching conditions do not take threshold corrections into account. We present results showing the required size of threshold corrections for any value of the intermediate and unification scales. In particular, our results demonstrate that both of these models are disfavored since they require large threshold corrections to allow for unification with a predicted proton lifetime above current experimental bounds.

Comments: 6 pages, 5 figures. Final version published in Eur. Phys. J. C