Proton Decay and Flavor Violating Thresholds in SO(10) Models

Abstract

The SO(10) models are very natural to address the neutrino data. However, the suppression of proton decay is a major problem in any supersymmetric grand unified models. In this talk, we briefly review a recent progress of the minimal supersymmetric SO(10) model, and we show how to alleviate the severe constraints from the nucleon decays by increasing the colored Higgs mass from the possible threshold effects. We also study the selection of a suitable flavor structure to suppress the decay amplitudes. The restrictions of the nucleon decay provide us a prediction to the flavor physics and the neutrino oscillation parameters.