Testing realistic SO(10) SUSY GUTs with proton decay and gravitational waves

Abstract

We present a comprehensive analysis of a supersymmetric SO(10) Grand Unified Theory, which is broken to the Standard Model via the breaking of two intermediate symmetries. The spontaneous breaking of the first intermediate symmetry, B−L, leads to the generation of cosmic strings and right-handed neutrino masses and further to an observable cosmological background of gravitational waves and generation of light neutrino masses via type-I seesaw mechanism. Supersymmetry breaking manifests as sparticle masses below the B−L breaking but far above the electroweak scale due to proton decay limits. This naturally pushes the B−L breaking scale close to the GUT scale, leading to the formation of metastable cosmic strings, which can provide a gravitational wave spectrum consistent with the recent Pulsar Timing Arrays observation. We perform a detailed analysis of this model using two-loop renormalisation group equations, including threshold corrections, to determine the symmetry-breaking scale consistent with the recent Pulsar Timing Arrays signals such as NANOGrav 15-year data and testable by the next-generation limits on proton decay from Hyper-K and JUNO. Simultaneously, we find the regions of the model parameter space that can predict the measured quark and lepton masses and mixing, baryon asymmetry of our Universe, a viable dark matter candidate and can be tested by a combination of neutrinoless double beta decay searches and limits on the sum of neutrinos masses.

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ORCID for Bowen Fu: orcid.org/0000-0003-2270-8352

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