DUSEL R&D: Testing Theories of Proton Stability and Unification at DUSEL

杜塞尔R

• 批准号: 0704067
• 负责人: Pran Nath
• 金额: $ 6.08万
• 依托单位: Northeastern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-01 至 2013-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0704067&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: DUSEL; R&D; Testing; Theories; Proton

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL) will explore new physics at extremely short distances not accessible to accelerator experiments. Specifically, the proposed proton stability experiments at DUSEL, along with a new generation of experiments at HyperK, MEMPHYS, ICARUS, and LENA, will either discover proton decay or at the very least put new limits on proton lifetimes which would be an order of magnitude or more better than the current limits. In view of the huge effort that will go into these experiments it is incumbent on theorists to delineate more clearly the prediction for the proton lifetime in various models, compute the branching ratios and provide criteria for discrimination among models that survive the SuperK limits. Current analyses on proton lifetime could be improved on two fronts. First, the detailed branching ratios for many models have not been worked out and, second, new effort is needed in reducing uncertainties in absolute prediction rates. This award will provide funding for studies to fill in these gaps and provide the experimentalists with testable predictions of proton decay for a variety of unified models. They will investigate a new class of SO(10) models based on a unified Higgs sector for which proton decay has thus far not been calculated. Among broader impacts, it is proposed to investigate the correlations between proton stability, neutrino masses, and dark matter consistent with WMAP data. These theoretical efforts are essential for the analysis and interpretation of data from the proposed new generation of proton stability experiments at DUSEL and elsewhere, and it is only with such effort that the maximum benefit from the proposed experiments can accrue.

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。深地下科学与工程实验室（DUSEL）将在加速器实验无法到达的极短距离探索新的物理学。具体来说，在DUSEL进行的质子稳定性实验，以及在HyperK、MEMPHYS、ICARUS和LENA进行的新一代实验，要么会发现质子衰变，要么至少会对质子寿命提出新的限制，这将比目前的限制高出一个数量级或更多。考虑到这些实验需要付出的巨大努力，理论家们有责任更清楚地描绘各种模型中质子寿命的预测，计算分支比，并提供区分在SuperK极限下存活的模型的标准。现有的质子寿命分析可以从两个方面加以改进。首先，许多模型的详细分支比尚未计算出来；其次，在减少绝对预测率的不确定性方面需要作出新的努力。该奖项将为填补这些空白的研究提供资金，并为实验家提供各种统一模型的质子衰变的可测试预测。他们将研究一类新的基于统一希格斯扇区的SO（10）模型，迄今为止质子衰变还没有被计算出来。在更广泛的影响中，建议研究与WMAP数据一致的质子稳定性，中微子质量和暗物质之间的相关性。这些理论上的努力对于分析和解释在DUSEL和其他地方提出的新一代质子稳定性实验的数据是必不可少的，只有通过这样的努力，才能从提出的实验中获得最大的好处。