The geometry of grand unification (Q762820)

The author presents a formulation of the grand unified theory in the framework of gauge field theory. The idea of gauge field theory is to account for interactions in terms of the connections of a principle fibre bundle P(M,G) where M is the Minkowski space-time and G is a suitable Lie group. Assuming G to be compact and simple weak, electromagnetic and strong interactions have been unified e.g. \(G=U(1)\) gives electromagnetic theory, \(G=U(1)\times SU(2)\) the unification of weak and electromagnetic theory of Salam and Weinberger, \(G=U(1)\times SU(2)\times SU(3)\) gives the weak-electromagnetic-strong unification. But the condition of compactness of G has to be relaxed and SO(3,1) admitted to get a viable theory of gravity. The problem of grand unification is to find a gauge group G which contains U(1)\(\times SU(2)\times SU(3)\) and the Lorentz group and \(H=U(1)\times SU(2)\times SU(3)\) as the maximal compact subgroup. The author proposes SU(3,2) as the suitable gauge group. He notes that this theory has the same content as far as the U(1)\(\times SU(2)\times SU(3)\) part is concerned as that of Georgi and Glashow using \(G+SU(5)\). He shows that O'Raifertaigh's no-go theorem does not apply in this context. The construction of the Lagrangian, symmetry breaking and quantization are discussed. One important physical conclusion is that the proton is stable.