The electroweak mixing angle in unified gauge theories

Abstract

We study in detail the factors that influence the unification relations among the coupling parameters of strong and electroweak interactions. We find that the factor that decides the unification relations in a theory is the fermion content of the theory. The specific ‘observed’ group of strong and electroweak interactions used and the specific unification group in which these interactions are embedded are largely irrelevant. In particular, we find that the unification value of the electroweak mixing angle is the same for almost all models of interest. We also explicitly illustrate that the canonical value 3/8 of the mixing angle is a characteristic result of the currently popular sequential doublets scheme of fermions. Addition of extra fermion singlets reduces the mixing angle to 1/4. We propose this sequential triplets scheme of fermions as an interesting alternative to the current scheme.