Towards a new minimal SO(10) unification

We argue that non-supersymmetric SO(10) models based on a renormalizable Higgs sector in which spontaneous symmetry breaking is triggered by the VEVs of a 45-dimensional adjoint and a 126-dimensional tensor representations can provide a potentially realistic yet relatively simple framework for a future robust estimate of the proton lifetime. Following closely the work [1] we comment on the gauge unification constraints on the B - L breaking scale and show that there are several regions in the parameter space of the minimal model where the seesaw scale in the phenomenologically favoured ballpark of around 1013÷14GeV is consistently supported. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.