Physical Renormalization Schemes and Grand Unification

In a physical renormalization scheme, gauge couplings are defined directly in terms of physical observables. Such effective charges are analytic functions of physical scales, and thus mass thresholds are treated with their correct analytic dependence. In particular, particles will contribute to physical predictions even at energies below their threshold. This is in contrast to unphysical renormalization schemes such as MS-bar, where mass thresholds are treated as step functions. In this paper we analyze supersymmetric grand unification in the context of physical renormalization schemes and find a number of qualitative differences and improvements in precision over conventional approaches. The effective charge formalism presented here provides a template for calculating all mass threshold effects for any given grand unified theory. These new threshold corrections may be important in making the measured values of the gauge couplings consistent with unification.