Publisher’s Pick: Coleman–Weinberg symmetry breaking in SU(8) induced by a third rank antisymmetric tensor scalar field II: the fermion spectrum

By Rebecca Gillan on July 3, 2017

Stephen L. Adler is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Natural Sciences of the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton USA. He has won many awards for his work, including the J. J. Sakurai Prize from the American Physical Society and the Dirac Medal and Prize of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics.

Stephen Adler

Here he tells us more about his recent paper in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, Coleman–Weinberg symmetry breaking in SU(8) induced by a third rank antisymmetric tensor scalar field II: the fermion spectrum

What prompted you to pursue this field of research?

Since the LHC has not found supersymmetry, I think it is timely to consider non-supersymmetric models for grand unification. For several years I have been studying a specific model based on the gauge group SU(8), that has novel features such as balance between boson and fermion degrees of freedom without full supersymmetry, anomaly cancellation between spin-1/2 and spin-3/2 fermions, potentially calculable induced Yukawa couplings, and a natural mechanism for breaking to an SU(3) color group. I have been continuing to study aspects of the model, to see if it can give a realistic unification theory.

What is this latest paper all about?

In an earlier paper in J. Phys. A I studied the Coleman-Weinberg symmetry breaking mechanism for the SU(8) model, to get the initial stages and group theoretic classification of the symmetry breaking chain. In the current paper I continue this analysis, with a focus on the dynamical features that are required to make contact with the standard model fermion spectrum.

What do you plan to do next?

I plan to continue studying the model, to see whether it can be made to work.

We thank Professor Adler for taking the time to explain his work and for publishing in the journal.

Coleman–Weinberg symmetry breaking in SU(8) induced by a third rank antisymmetric tensor scalar field

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