Small steps towards Grand Unification and the electron/positron excesses in cosmic-ray experiments

Abstract

We consider a small extension of the standard model by adding two Majorana fermions; those are adjoint representations of the SU(2)_L and SU(3)_c gauge groups of the standard model. In this extension, the gauge coupling unification at an energy scale higher than 10^{15} GeV is realized when the masses of the triplet and the octet fermions are smaller than 10^4 GeV and 10^{12} GeV, respectively. We also show that an appropriate symmetry ensures a long lifetime of the neutral component of the triplet fermion whose thermal relic density naturally explains the observed dark matter density. The electron/positron excesses observed in recent cosmic-ray experiments can be also explained by the decay of the triplet fermion.