Towards a Two-Loop Matching of Gauge Couplings in Grand Unified Theories

We calculate the two-loop matching corrections for the gauge couplings at the Grand Unification scale in a general framework that aims at making as few assumptions on the underlying Grand Unified Theory (GUT) as possible. In this paper we present an intermediate result that is general enough to be applied to the GeorgiGlashow SU(5) as a “toy model”. The numerical effects in this theory are found to be larger than the current experimental uncertainty on αs. Furthermore, we give many technical details regarding renormalization procedure, tadpole terms, gauge fixing and the treatment of group theory factors, which is useful preparative work for the extension of the calculation to supersymmetric GUTs. PACS numbers: 12.10.Kt 12.38.Bx 02.20.Sv 11.25.Db