John March-Russell

Abstract:

In grand unified theories based on orbifold constructions in higher dimensions, Higgsino-mediated proton decay is absent. However, proton decay mediated by $X$ and $Y$ gauge bosons is typically enhanced to levels detectable by current and future experiments. We analyse the phenomenology of proton decay induced by the minimal coupling of $X,Y$ gauge bosons. In particular, we show that the novel realization of matter in orbifold GUTs can lead to unusual final state flavour structure, for example, the dominance of the $p\to K^0\mu^+$ mode. Furthermore, we discuss proton decay induced by higher-derivative brane operators, finding potentially observable rates for natural values of the operator coefficients.

Abstract:

In the context of brane-world theories, the production cross-section for black holes may be greatly enhanced. Such black holes can in principle lead to detectable signals via their Hawking evaporation to brane-localized modes. We calculate, in the semiclassical approximation, the leading corrections to the energy spectrum (the greybody factors) for decay into scalar fields, as a function of the number of toroidally compactified extra dimensions, and partial wave number.