Inclusive Nucleon Decay Searches as a Frontier of Baryon Number Violation

TL;DR

This paper advocates for inclusive and model-independent nucleon decay searches, emphasizing their importance in probing baryon number violation and high-scale physics beyond the Standard Model, especially for multi-body and invisible decay channels.

Contribution

It highlights the significance of inclusive and model-independent nucleon decay searches, proposing their use to better constrain baryon number violation beyond traditional two-body decay channels.

Findings

Inclusive searches are valuable for multi-body decay channels.

Current experiments can be complemented by inclusive and invisible decay searches.

Similar strategies apply to processes with $ abla B > 1$, which are largely unexplored.

Abstract

Proton decay, and the decay of nucleons in general, constitutes one of the most sensitive probes of high-scale physics beyond the Standard Model. Most of the existing nucleon decay searches have focused primarily on two-body decay channels, motivated by Grand Unified Theories and supersymmetry. However, many higher-dimensional operators violating baryon number by one unit, $\Delta B = 1$, induce multi-body nucleon decay channels, which have been only weakly constrained thus far. While direct searches for all such possible channels are desirable, they are highly impractical. In light of this, we argue that inclusive nucleon decay searches, $N \rightarrow X +$anything (where $X$ is a light Standard Model particle with an unknown energy distribution), are particularly valuable, as are model-independent and invisible nucleon decay searches such as $n \rightarrow$ invisible. We comment on complementarity and opportunities for such searches in the current as well as upcoming large-scale experiments Super-Kamiokande, Hyper-Kamiokande, JUNO, and DUNE. Similar arguments apply to $\Delta B >1$ processes, which kinematically allow for even more involved final states and are essentially unexplored experimentally.