Determining Majorana Nature of Neutrino from Nucleon Decays and n-nbar oscillations

TL;DR

This paper proposes that observing specific baryon number violating processes, such as certain nucleon decays and neutron-antineutron oscillations, can confirm the Majorana nature of neutrinos through their shared (B-L) violation.

Contribution

It introduces a model-independent method to determine the Majorana character of neutrinos via baryon number violation processes.

Findings

Observation of p f7 e^+ b0 pi^0 and n f7 e^- b0 pi^0 decays indicates Majorana neutrinos.

Detection of p f7 e^+ b0 pi^0 and n-nbar oscillations confirms Majorana nature.

Observation of n f7 e^- b0 pi^+ and n-nbar oscillations also establishes Majorana neutrinos.

Abstract

We show that discovery of baryon number violation in two processes with at least one obeying the selection rule \Delta (B-L) = \pm 2 can determine the Majorana character of neutrinos. Thus observing p \to e^+ \pi^0 and n \to e^- \pi^0 decays, or p \to e^+ \pi^0 and n-nbar oscillations, or n \to e^- \pi^+ and n-nbar oscillations would establish that neutrinos are Majorana particles. We discuss this in a model-independent effective operator approach.