Supersymmetric proton decay revisited

• Published in: The European physical journal. C, Particles and fields Vol. 80; no. 4; pp. 1 - 30
• Main Authors: Ellis, John, Evans, L., Nagata, Natsumi, Olive, Keith A., Velasco-Sevilla, Liliana
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.04.2020; Springer; Springer Nature B.V; SpringerOpen
• Subjects: Analysis; Astronomy; Astrophysics and Cosmology; Baryons; Broken symmetry; Decay; Detectors; Electroweak interactions (field theory); Elementary Particles; Hadrons; Heavy Ions; Large Hadron Collider; Measurement Science and Instrumentation; Nuclear Energy; Nuclear Physics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS; Quantum Field Theories; Quantum Field Theory; Quarks; Regular Article - Theoretical Physics; String Theory; Supersymmetry
• ISSN: 1434-6044; 1434-6052
• DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-7872-3

Encouraged by the advent of a new generation of underground detectors – JUNO, DUNE and Hyper-Kamiokande – that are projected to improve significantly on the present sensitivities to various baryon decay modes, we revisit baryon decay in the minimal supersymmetric SU(5) GUT. We discuss the phenomenological uncertainties associated with hadronic matrix elements and the value of the strong coupling α s – which are the most important – the weak mixing angle θ W , quark masses including one-loop renormalization effects, quark mixing and novel GUT phases that are not visible in electroweak interaction processes. We apply our analysis to a variety of CMSSM, super- and sub-GUT scenarios in which soft supersymmetry-breaking parameters are assumed to be universal at, above and below the GUT scale, respectively. In many cases, we find that the next generation of underground detectors should be able to probe models with sparticle masses that are O ( 10 )  TeV, beyond the reach of the LHC.