Proton Decay Prediction from a Gauge-Higgs Unification Scenario in Five Dimensions

Abstract

The Higgs boson mass and top quark mass imply that the Higgs quartic coupling vanishes around the scale of 10⁹–10¹³ GeV, depending on the precise value of the top quark mass. The vanishing quartic coupling can be naturally addressed if the Higgs field originates from a five-dimensional gauge field and the fifth dimension is compactified at the scale of the vanishing Higgs quartic coupling, which is a scenario based on gauge-Higgs unification. We present a general prediction of the scenario on the proton decay process p→π⁰ e⁺. In many gauge-Higgs unification models, the first-generation fermions are localized towards an orbifold fixed point in order to realize the realistic Yukawa couplings. Hence, four-fermion operators responsible for the proton decay can appear with a suppression of the five-dimensional Planck scale (not the four-dimensional Planck scale). Since the five-dimensional Planck scale is connected to the compactification scale, we have a correlation between the proton partial decay width and the top quark mass. We show that the future Hyper-Kamiokande experiment may discover the proton decay if the top quark pole mass is larger than about 172.5 GeV.