Fermion Confinement in Brane World Models with SO(10) Unification

Abstract

In this Honours Research Project the aim is to build a toy model of an SO(10) Grand Unified Theory with an extra spatial dimension. Utilising the Clash of Symmetries mechanism proposed for brane-world models by Davidson, Toner, Volkas and Wali and using the asymmetric kink solution for the Higgs Field in the 45 of SO(10) discovered by Shin and Volkas, the symmetry on the brane will be broken to SU(4) x SU(2) x U(1), whereas the symmetry in the bulk is G_SM x U(1). However, any fermions localised on the brane would experience slight leakage into the bulk, and hence the symmetry is broken down to G_SM x U(1). We then introduce different SO(10) representations for fermions into the theory and determine which components become localised as chiral zero-modes, in the hope that the Standard Model particles are confined. Various group theoretical techniques are introduced as we study the 120, 16, 126 and 144 representations, and detailed analysis of the 16's confinement characteristics is performed.