Fractional charges and the renormalization group in theSU(4)×O(4) string model

We study the renormalization group equations of the gauge couplings in theSU(4)×O(4)～SU(4)×SU(2) _L ×SU(2_ _R string model, derived in the context of the free fermionic formulation of the four dimensional superstring. We calculate the effective string unification scale taking into account string threshold corrections and we consider the consequences of then _L andn _R fractionally charged states, sitting in the (1, 2, 1) and (1, 1, 2) representations correspondingly, of the gauge symmetry of the model. Some of these states become massive at a very high scale, when a number of singlet fields acquire vev's. However, many of them (the precise number depends on the specific choice of the flat direction) remain in the massless spectrum. We consider various cases and find that, for specific choices of flat directions, the physical parameters of the model, like the grand unification scale and the low energy parameters sin²θ _W and α₃, depend only on the differencen _?=n_L-n_R. We study more general cases where remnants of the exotic doublets remain below theSU(4) breaking scale. We also solve the coupled differential system of the renormalization group equations for the gauge and the Yukawa couplings and estimate the range of the top quark mass which is found to lie in the range 140 GeV<m _t<190GeV.