$n$-$\bar n$ oscillations and the neutron lifetime

TL;DR

This paper explores neutron-antineutron oscillations within particle models that address the neutron lifetime anomaly, proposing a simple MSSM extension with baryon number violation and discussing its realization in string-inspired GUT frameworks.

Contribution

It introduces a minimal MSSM extension with baryon number violation to explain neutron lifetime anomalies and connects it to string-inspired GUT models.

Findings

Constraints on neutron-antineutron oscillations are derived.

A simple MSSM extension with only $u^cd^cd^c$ term is proposed.

Implementation in string-motivated GUT models is demonstrated.

Abstract

Neutron-antineutron oscillations are considered in the light of recently proposed particle models, which claim to resolve the neutron lifetime anomaly, indicating the existence of baryon violating $\Delta B=1$ interactions. Possible constraints are derived coming from the non-observation of neutron-antineutron oscillations, which can take place if the dark matter particle produced in neutron decay happens to be a Majorana fermion. It is shown that this can be realised in a simple MSSM extention where only the baryon number violating term $u^cd^cd^c$ is included whilst all other R-parity violating terms are prevented to avoid rapid proton decay. It is demostrated how this scenario can be implemented in a string motivated GUT broken to MSSM by fluxes.