Flavor physics in SO(10) GUTs with suppressed proton decay due to gauged discrete symmetry

Generic SO(10) grand unified theory models suffer from the problem that Planck scale induced nonrenormalizable proton-decay operators require extreme suppression of their couplings to be compatible with present experimental upper limits. One way to resolve this problem is to supplement SO(10) by simple gauged discrete symmetries which can also simultaneously suppress the renormalizable R-parity violating ones when they occur and make the theory more natural. Here we discuss the phenomenological viability of such models. We first show that for both classes of models, e.g the ones that use 16(H) or 126(H) to break B-L (baryon minus lepton number) symmetry, the minimal Higgs content which is sufficient for proton-decay suppression is inadequate for explaining fermion masses despite the presence of all apparently needed couplings. We then present an extended 16(H) model, with three 10 and three 45 Higgs field, where is free of this problem. We propose this as a realistic and natural model for fermion unification and discuss the phenomenology of this model e.g. its predictions for neutrino mixings and lepton flavor violation.