We study the proton lifetime in the SO(10) Grand Unified Theory (GUT), which has the left–right (LR) symmetric gauge theory below the GUT scale. In particular, we focus on the minimal model without the bi-doublet Higgs field in the LR symmetric model, which predicts the LR-breaking scale at around \(10^{10-12}\) GeV. The Wilson coefficients of the proton decay operators turn out to be considerably larger than those in the minimal SU(5) GUT model especially when the Standard Model Yukawa interactions are generated by integrating out extra vector-like multiplets. As a result, we find that the proton lifetime can be within the reach of the Hyper-Kamiokande experiment even when the GUT gauge-boson mass is in the \(10^{16}\)–\(10^{17}\) GeV range. We also show that the mass of the extra vector-like multiplets can be generated by the Peccei–Quinn symmetry breaking in a consistent way with the axion dark matter scenario.

中文翻译：

---

SO（10）大统一中的质子衰减和轴突暗物质通过最小的左右对称性

我们在SO（10）大统一理论（GUT）中研究了质子寿命，该理论具有低于GUT尺度的左右对称规范理论。特别地，我们关注于在LR对称模型中没有双双希格斯场的最小模型，该模型预测LR破坏尺度在\（10 ^ {10-12} \）  GeV左右。质子衰减算子的Wilson系数比最小SU（5）GUT模型中的Wilson系数大得多，尤其是当标准模型Yukawa相互作用是通过整合额外的矢量样多重峰生成的时。结果，我们发现，即使GUT规范玻色子质量在\（10 ^ {16} \）中，质子寿命也可以在Hyper-Kamiokande实验的范围内–\（10 ^ {17} \）  GeV范围。我们还表明，Peccei-Quinn对称性的破坏可以以与轴突暗物质场景一致的方式生成额外的类似矢量的多重体。