Unitarity of the higher-dimensional standard model

We study the unitarity of the standard model (SM) in higher dimensions. We show that the essential features of SM unitarity remain after compactification, and place bounds on the highest Kaluza-Klein (KK) level N-KK and the Higgs mass m(H) in the effective four-dimensional (4d) low-energy theory. We demonstrate these general observations by explicitly analyzing the effective 4d KK theory of a compactified 5d SM on S-1/Z(2). The nontrivial energy cancellations in the scattering of longitudinal KK gluons or KK weak bosons, a consequence of the geometric Higgs mechanism, are verified. In the case of the electroweak gauge bosons, the longitudinal KK states also include a small mixture from the KK Higgs excitations. With the analyses before and after compactification, we derive the strongest bounds on NKK from gauge KK scattering. Applying these bounds to higher-dimensional SUSY GUTs implies that only a small number of KK states can be used to accelerate gauge coupling unification. As a consequence, we show that the GUT scale in the 5d minimal SUSY GUT cannot be lower than about 10(14) GeV. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.