Review of Nucleon Decay Searches at Super-Kamiokande

TL;DR

This paper reviews the search for nucleon decay at Super-Kamiokande, highlighting its role in testing baryon number violation and GUT predictions through large underground water Cherenkov experiments.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of nucleon decay searches at Super-Kamiokande, including analysis of various decay channels and the resulting experimental limits.

Findings

Set the world's best limits on nucleon decay modes.

Excluded significant parameter space of GUT models.

Demonstrated the sensitivity of large water Cherenkov detectors to baryon number violation.

Abstract

Baryon number violation appears in many contexts. It is a requirement for baryogenesis and is a consequence of Grand Unified Theories (GUTs), which predict nucleon decay. Nucleon decay searches provide the most direct way to test baryon number conservation and also serve as a unique probe of GUT scale physics around $10^{14-16}$ GeV. Such energies cannot be reached directly by accelerators. However, they can be explored indirectly at large underground water Cherenkov (WC) experiments, which due to the size of their fiducial volume are highly sensitive to nucleon decays. We review searches for baryon number violating processes at the state of the art WC detector, the Super-Kamiokande. Analyses of the typically dominant non-SUSY and SUSY nucleon decay channels such as $p \rightarrow (e^+, \mu^+) \pi^0$ and $p \rightarrow \nu K^+$, as well as more exotic searches, will be discussed. Presented studies set the world's best limits, which circumvent the allowed parameter space of theoretical models