Attempts at superunification

Arguments based on the form of the Higgs potential as determined from the conjectured underlying symmetry, and on the requirement of an anomaly free but non vector-like fermion sector, both point to SU(5) as the largest gauge group which can remain unbroken after the conjectured dynamical breakdown of the SO(8) supersymmetry at the Planck mass. Superficially, at least, the content of the residual gauge theory contains the elements necessary to populate the low energy particle spectrum and to permit a perturbative SU(5) theory to emerge from a strong coupling theory at the Planck mass, with the further breakdown of SU(5) at lower energies arising from radiative corrections. It remains to be seen whether such a program can be made to work in detail. (28 refs).