No Arabic abstract
The apparent unification of gauge couplings around 10^16 GeV is one of the strong arguments in favor of Supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model (SM). In this contribution two new analyses of the gauge coupling running, the latter using in contrast to previous studies not data at the Z peak but at LEP2 energies, are presented. The generic SUSY scale in the more precise novel approach is 93 < M_SUSY < 183 GeV, easily within LHC, and possibly even within Tevatron reach.
The apparent unification of gauge couplings in Grand Unified Theories around 10$^{16}$ GeV is one of the strong arguments in favor of Supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model. In this paper, an analysis of the measurements of the strong coupling running from the CMS experiment at the LHC is combined with a traditional gauge coupling unification analysis using data at the Z peak. This approach places powerful constraints on the possible scales of new physics and on the parameters around the unification scale. A supersymmetric analysis without GUT threshold corrections describes the CMS data well and provides perfect unification. The favored scales are $M_{SUSY} = 2820 +670 -540$ GeV and $M_{GUT} = 1.05 pm 0.06 cdot 10^{16}$ GeV. For zero or small threshold corrections the scale of new physics may be well within LHC reach.
We systematically construct two kinds of models with canonical gauge coupling unification and universal high-scale supersymmetry breaking. In the first we introduce standard vector-like particles while in the second we also include non-standard vector-like particles. We require that the gauge coupling unification scale is from 5 x 10^{15} GeV to the Planck scale, that the universal supersymmetry breaking scale is from 10 TeV to the unification scale, and that the masses of the vector-like particles (M_V) are universal and in the range from 200 GeV to 1 TeV. Using two-loop renormalization group equation (RGE) running for the gauge couplings and one-loop RGE running for Yukawa couplings and the Higgs quartic coupling, we calculate the supersymmetry breaking scales, the gauge coupling unification scales, and the corresponding Higgs mass ranges. When the vector-like particle masses are less than 1 TeV, these models can be tested at the LHC.
We study the evolution of the gauge coupling constants in string unification schemes in which the light spectrum below the compactification scale is exactly that of the minimal supersymmetric standard model. In the absence of string threshold corrections the predicted values $sin^2theta _W=0.218$ and $alpha _s=0.20$ are in gross conflict with experiment, but these corrections are generically important. One can express the string threshold corrections to $sin^2theta _W$ and $alpha_s$ in terms of certain $modular$ $weights$ of quark, lepton and Higgs superfields as well as the $moduli$ of the string model. We find that in order to get agreement with the experimental measurements within the context of this $minimal$ scheme, certain constraints on the $modular$ $weights$ of the quark, lepton and Higgs superfields should be obeyed. Our analysis indicates that this $minimal$ $string$ $unification$
We investigate gauge coupling unification at 2-loops for theories with 5 extra vectorlike SU(5) fundamentals added to the MSSM. This is a borderline case where unification is only predicted in certain regions of parameter space. We establish a lower bound on the scale for the masses of the extra flavors, as a function of the sparticle masses. Models far outside of the bound do not predict unification at all (but may be compatible with unification), and models outside but near the boundary cannot reliably claim to predict it with an accuracy comparable to the MSSM prediction. Models inside the boundary can work just as well as the MSSM.
We make a detailed study of the unification of gauge couplings in the MSSM with large extra dimensions. We find some scenarios where unification can be achieved (with the strong coupling constant at the Z mass within one standard deviation of the experimental value) with both the compactification scale and the SUSY breaking scale in the few TeV range. No enlargement of the gauge group or particle content is needed. One particularly interesting scenario is when the SUSY breaking scale is larger than the compactification scale, but both are small enough to be probed at the CERN LHC. Unification in two scales scenarios is also investigated and found to give results within the LHC.