Grand Unified Theories and Lepton-Flavour Violation

Abstract

Lepton-flavour violating processes, such as $μ\to eγ$, are studied in ordinary (non-SUSY) SU(5) and SUSY SU(5) grand unified theories. First given are some introductory argument on the mechanism of U.V. divergence cancellation in flavour changing neutral current processes and on the decoupling of particles with GUT scale masses . We next see that such general argument is confirmed by an explicit calculation of the amplitude of $μ\to eγ$ in ordinary SU(5), which shows that logarithmic divergence really cancels among diagrams and remaining finite part are suppressed by at least $1/M_{GUT}^2$. In SUSY SU(5), flavour changing slepton mass-squared term get a logarithmic correction, as recently claimed. However, when the effect of flavour changing wave function renormalization is also taken into account such logarithmic correction turns out to disappear, provided a condition is met among SUSY breaking soft masses. In SUGRA-inspired SUSY GUT, such condition is not satisfied. But the remaining logarithmic effect is argued not to be taken as a prediction of the theory associated with an irrelevant operator. We find that the log-correction should not exist in models with gauge mediated SUSY breaking.