Popis: |
This work considers the remarkable suggestion that the three families of quarks and leptons may be unified, together with the Higgs and gauge fields of the Standard Model (SM), into a single “particle”, namely the 248 vector superfield of a ten-dimensional E8 super Yang Mills (SYM) theory. Towards a realistic model along these lines, a class of orbifoldings based on T6/(ZN×ZM) are proposed and explored, that can in principle break E8 SYM down to the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM), embedded in a larger group such as E6, SO(10) or SU(5), together with other gauge group factors which can be broken by Wilson lines. A realistic model based on T6/(Z6×Z2) is presented. The orbifold breaks E8 SYM down to a Pati-Salam gauge group in 4d, together with other gauge groups, which are subsequently broken to the SM gauge group with proto-realistic fermion mass matrices, and experimental signals associated with a low Pati-Salam scale. |