Light particles with baryon and lepton numbers

TL;DR

This paper explores hypothetical light particles with baryon and lepton numbers that could cause exotic baryon decays, suggesting new experimental avenues beyond traditional proton decay searches.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of light baryon and lepton number-carrying particles and analyzes their potential decay signatures in various experimental settings.

Findings

Light particles can induce exotic baryon decays not fully constrained by current searches.

Such particles enable baryon decays involving mesons and heavy hadrons.

Potential to detect baryon number violation in heavy hadron decays at colliders.

Abstract

We consider light new particles $\chi$ and $\phi$ that carry baryon and lepton numbers. If these particles are lighter than nucleons they lead to exotic decays such as $p\to \pi^+ \chi$ and $p\to e^+\phi$, not yet fully constrained by dedicated searches. For $\chi$ and $\phi$ masses in the GeV range proton decays are kinematically forbidden but other decays of the forms baryon $\to$ meson$+\chi$, meson $\to$ baryon$+\bar\chi$, and baryon $\to$ anti-lepton$+\phi$ involving heavy initial hadrons are allowed. This opens up the possibility to search for apparent baryon number violation not just in underground experiments such as Super-Kamiokande and DUNE but also in decays of heavy hadrons in charm and B factories.