Proton decay in non-minimal SU(5) guts

Abstract

We first give an overview of the minimal SU(5) GUT, outlining its successes and failures: we argue that in view of the failure of this theory to reproduce correctly light quark and lepton mass ratios, the lack of experimental evidence for the decay mode p→e+π0 is hardly surprising. We then consider non‐minimal extensions of the basic SU (5) model, with or without supersymmetry, which give rise to quite different hierarchies of nucleon decay modes. These considerations serve to emphasize the importance of ‘‘broad band’’ searches for proton decay in all possible modes in the next generation of experiments.