Speaker
Description
It is known that the recently reported shift of the W boson mass can be easily explained by an $SU(2)_L$ triplet Higgs boson with zero hypercharge if it obtains a vacuum expectation value of O(1) GeV.
Surprisingly, the addition of a TeV scale complex triplet Higgs boson to the standard model leads to a precise unification of the gauge couplings at around $10^14$ GeV.
Although it seems the proton decay constraints would doom such a low uni cation scale, I will show that the constraints can be avoided by introducing vector-like fermions which mix with the SM fermions through mass terms involving the GUT breaking Higgs field.
As I will discuss, this will lead to a scenario which is not ruled out but could be tested in near future proton decay experiments. Importantly, the simplest viable model only requires the addition of one pair of vector-like fermions transforming 10 and 10.
I will also discuss a minor tweak to this model which will allow us to identify the other triplet as dark matter. Lastly, I will discuss the more general ramifications of the W boson mass for grand unification .
