Gravitational effects in models of grand unification

Grand unified theories constitute an attractive idea bringing further coherence into our understanding of the fundamental forces of Nature beyond the well-accepted Standard Model. This dissertation contains a systematic study of the unification of gauge couplings associated with these forces in the presence of one or several effective dimension-5 operators cHG munuGmunu/4MPl, which are induced into the grand unified theory through gravitational interactions at the Planck scale. These operators alter the usually assumed condition for gauge coupling unification and can, depending on the Higgs content H of the theory and on its vacuum expectation value, lead to grand unification in models other than commonly believed and at scales Mx significantly different than naively expected.;After presenting a general framework to treat such effects, we compute, for the case of SU(5) and SO(10) unification groups, the associated group theory constants necessary for the study of concrete models. We investigate the size of these effects in non-supersymmetric unification models and find that there exist regions of natural Wilson coefficients c in parameter space that achieve successful unification of the gauge couplings, while easily satisfying the bounds on the unification scale coming from the non-observation of proton decay. Both of these requirements are widely assumed to be violated in non-supersymmetric models of grand unification, but, as we show, can be fulfilled due to the effects coming from gravitational dimension-5 operators. A comparison to supersymmetric unification models shows that their parameter space for successful grand unification is no more natural than the one for the non-supersymmetric models.;The main conclusion of this dissertation is that fairly minimal unification models are possible, i.e., with small unification groups and without supersymmetric particles. Whereas the observation of proton decay seems to be the only possible evidence for grand unification presently reachable, we should know within the next few years whether or not low-energy supersymmetry is realized in Nature.;This dissertation includes previously published co-authored material.