Dark matter stability and unification without supersymmetry
by
Michele Frigerio
→
Europe/Berlin
Auditorium
Auditorium
Description
Several features of the Standard Model find a natural explanation in the framework of grand unification. A phenomenologically motivated candidate for new physics at the TeV scale is a stable, weakly interacting dark matter particle. In this talk I will attempt to connect these two facts, in a scenario without low energy supersymmetry. It turns out that (a) the dark matter particle alone can improve gauge coupling unification, raising the unification scale up to the lower bound imposed by proton decay, and (b) the dark matter stability can automatically follow from the grand unification symmetry. A unique simple candidate satisfying these two properties is singled out: a fermion isotriplet with zero hypercharge, member of an adjoint representation of $SO(10)$. I will discuss the phenomenological signatures of this TeV scale fermion, which can be tested in direct and indirect future dark matter searches. The proton decay rate into $e^+\pi^0$ is predicted close to the present bound.
