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《美国复苏与再投资法》（公法111-5）资助的。深层科学和工程实验室（Dusel）将在极短的距离内探索新物理，而加速器实验无法进入。具体而言，Dusel的拟议质子稳定性实验以及HyperK，Memphys，Icarus和Lena的新一代实验将发现质子衰减，或者至少对质子寿命造成了新的限制，这将是比当前限制更好或更好的质量范围。鉴于这些实验将付出的巨大努力，理论家在各种模型中更清楚地描绘质子寿命的预测，计算分支比率并为在超级限制中幸存下来的模型中的歧视标准。当前对质子寿命的分析可以在两个方面改善。首先，尚未确定许多模型的详细分支比率，其次，在降低绝对预测率的不确定性时需要新的努力。该奖项将为填补这些空白的研究提供资金，并为实验者提供各种统一模型的质子衰变预测。他们将根据统一的HigGS部门研究一类新的SO（10）模型，迄今为止，质子衰减尚未计算出来。在更广泛的影响中，提议研究与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从Dusel和其他地方的拟议新一代质子稳定性实验的数据分析和解释至关重要，只有这样的努力才能使所提出的实验的最大收益能够产生。