Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2007. / "Graduate Program in Physics and Astronomy." Includes bibliographical references (p. 94-98).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-224).

Includes bibliographical references. / The tendency in theoretical physics, particularly in the past few decades, has been towards unification: over the years it has emerged that increasingly many physical phenomena can be explained by a common underlying theory. Symmetry principles, both global and local, play an important role in this unification programme. Global symmetries often account for approximate regularities we observe in nature - local or gauge symmetries are understood as basic symmetries which lie at the heart of the interactions of the constituents of matter.

Although the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics describes observations well, there are several shortcomings of it. The most crucial of these are that the SM cannot explain the origin of neutrino masses and the existence of dark matter. Furthermore, there are several aspects of it that are seemingly ad hoc, such as the choice of gauge group and the cancellation of gauge anomalies. These shortcomings point to a theory beyond the SM. Although there are many proposed models for physics beyond the SM, in this thesis, we focus on grand unified theories based on the SO(10) gauge group. It predicts that the three gauge groups in the SM unify at a higher energy into one, which contains the SM as a subgroup. We focus on the Yukawa sector of these models and investigate the extent to which the observables such as fermion masses and mixing parameters can be accommodated into different models based on the SO(10) gauge group. Neutrino masses and leptonic mixing parameters are particularly interesting, since SO(10) models naturally embed the seesaw mechanism. The difference in energy scale between the electroweak scale and the scale of unification spans around 14 orders of magnitude. Therefore, one must relate the parameters of the SO(10) model to those of the SM through renormalization group equations. We investigate this for several different models by performing fits of SO(10) models to fermion masses and mixing parameters, taking into account thresholds at which heavy right-handed neutrinos are integrated out of the theory. Although the results are in general dependent on the particular model under consideration, there are some general results that appear to hold true. The observ- ables of the Yukawa sector can in general be accommodated into SO(10) models only if the neutrino masses are normally ordered and that inverted ordering is strongly disfavored. We find that the observable that provides the most tension in the fits is the leptonic mixing angle θ2l3, whose value is consistently favored to be lower in the fits than the actual value. Furthermore, we find that numerical fits to the data favor type-I seesaw over type-II seesaw for the generation of neutrino masses. / <p>Examinator: Professor Mark Pearce, Fysik, KTH</p>

The vast majority of experiments in particle physics can be described by the Standard Model of particle physics (SM). However, there are indications for physics beyond it. The only experimentally demonstrated problem of the model is the difficulty to describe neutrino masses and leptonic mixing. There is a plethora of models that try to describe these phenomena and this thesis investigates several possibilities for new models, both full theories and effective frameworks.   The values of the parameters in a model are dependent on the energy scale and we say that the parameters run. The exact behavior of the running depends on the model and it provides a signature of the model. For a model defined at high energies it is necessary to run the parameters down to the electroweak scale in order to perform a comparison to the known values of observed quantities. In this thesis, we discuss renormalization group running in the context of extra dimensions and we provide an upper limit on the cutoff scale. We perform renormalization group running in two versions of a non-supersymmetric SO(10) model and we show that the SM parameters can be accommodated in both versions. In addition, we perform the running for the gauge couplings in a large set of radiative neutrino mass models and conclude that unification is possible in some of them.   The Higgs boson provides new possibilities to study physics beyond the SM. Its properties have to be tested with extremely high precision before it could be established whether the particle is truly the SM Higgs boson or not. In this thesis, we perform Bayesian parameter inference and model comparison. For models where the magnitude of the Higgs couplings is varied, we show that the SM is favored in comparison to all other models. Furthermore, we discuss lepton flavor violating processes in the context of the Zee model. We find that these can be sizeable and close to the experimental limits. / <p>QC 20170221</p>

In this thesis we focus on Grand Unified Theories based on the SO(10) gauge group and, in particular, on the viability of the minimal nonsupersymmetric SO(10) models. Technically, this amounts to a detailed assessment of their vac- uum stability and related (non-)tachyonicity of their scalar spectrum. It turns out that the one-loop scalar mass corrections are important for elimination of the tachyonic behaviour of certain pseudo-Goldstone bosons. In this work these issues are briefly reviewed and two distinct methods for the calculation of the critical radiative corrections are discussed. More specifically, besides the revision of the effective potential approach to the 45 ⊕ 16 Higgs model also the standard perturbative theory method is employed for this purpose. The latter approach is particularly suitable for the more realistic 45 ⊕ 126 Higgs model since it appears to be practically impossible to construct the corresponding effective potential in that case. Consequently, diagrammatic methods are used to calculate the SO(10)- invariant leading scalar quantum correction to the problematic pseudo-Goldstone masses in the 45 ⊕ 126 model. 1

The minimal renormalizable SO(10) Higgs model with the unified gauge sym- metry broken down by the adjoint representation 45S is known to suffer from tachyonic instabilities along all potentially realistic symmetry breaking chains. Few years ago, this issue has been identified as a mere relic of the tree-level cal- culations and the radiative corrections to the masses of the pair of the "most dangerous" pseudo-Goldstone scalars transforming as (8, 1, 0) and (1, 3, 0) with respect to the SU(3)c × SU(2)L × U(1)Y Standard model gauge group were com- puted. Remarkably enough, it turns out that in the minimal potentially realistic renormalizable realization of the model - consisting of 45S ⊕ 126S scalar and 45G gauge fields - there is third pseudo-Goldstone scalar, a full singlet with respect to the Standard model gauge group that, until recently, happened to escape the community's attention. In this thesis we computed the one-loop corrections to its mass employing two different methods within the effective potential approach. In both cases we reduced the complexity of our calculations by decomposition into the Standard model irreducible representations. In the end, we cross-checked the resulting formulae in four distinct symmetry breaking limits in which the pseudo- Goldstone mass was degenerated with those of...

The vast majority of all experimental results in particle physics can be described by the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. However, neither the existence of neutrino masses nor the mixing in the leptonic sector, which have been observed, can be described within this model. In fact, the model only describes a fraction of the known energy in the Universe. Thus, we know there must exist a theory beyond the SM. There is a plethora of possible candidates for such a model, such as supersymmetry, extra dimensional theories, and string theory. So far, there are no evidence in favor of these models. These theories often reside at high energies, and will therefore be manifest as effective theories at the low energies experienced here on Earth. A first example in extra-dimensional theories. From our four-dimensional point of view, particles which propagate through the extra dimensions will effectivel be perceived as towers of heavy particles. In this thesis we consider an extra-dimensional model with universal extra dimensions, where all SM particles are allowed to propagate through the extra dimensions. Especially, we place a bound on the range of validity for this model. We study the renormalization group running of the leptonic parameters as well as the Higgs self-coupling in this model with the neutrino masses generated by a Weinberg operator. Grand unified theories, where the gauge couplings of the SM are unified into a single oe at some high energy scale, are motivated by the electroweak unification. The unification must necessarily take place at energies many orders of magnitude greater than those that ever can be achieved on Earth. In order to make sense of the theoru, ehich is given at the grand unified scale, at the electroweak scale, the symmetry at the grand unified scale is broken down to the SM symmetry. Within these models the SM is considered as an effective field theory. We study renormalization group running of the leptonic parameters in a non-supersymmetric SO(10) model which is broken in two steps via the Pati-Salam group. Finally, the discovery of the new boson at the LHC provides a new opportunity to search for physics beyond the SM. We consider an effective model where the magnitudes of the couplings in the Higgs sector are scaled by so-called coupling scale factors. We perform Bayesian parameter inference based on the LHC data. Furthermore, we perform Bayesian model comparison, comparing models where one or several of the Higgs couplings are allowed, to the SM, where the couplings are fixed. / <p>QC 20141020</p>

Cette these a pour sujet la recherche de nouvelle physique et l'etude de la production Drell-Yan dans le canal di-electron a l'aide du detecteur CMS au LHC. Certaines theories au dela du Modele Standard (extra dimensions, theories de grande unification) predisent l'existence de particules massives pouvant se desintegrer en une paire d'electrons. La selection des evenements recherches est presentee et etudiee. La strategie d'analyse est introduite et testee. Enfin, l'analyse des premieres donnees a 7 TeV est decrite et les resultats sont commentes. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Détection et identification de la réaction quark + anti-quark -> e+ + e- à l'aide du détecteur CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) auprès du Grand Collisionneur de Hadrons du CERN, le LHC. Cette réaction permet de tester avec précision le Modèle Standard et de rechercher d'éventuelles nouvelles particules (Z') prédites par les théories de grande unification (GUT) et par les modèles à dimensions spatiales supplémentaires. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished