Nucleon decay in the deuteron

TL;DR

This paper calculates the deuteron lifetime due to baryon-number-violating processes using an effective field theory, showing that nuclear effects are small corrections to free nucleon decay rates.

Contribution

It develops a systematic effective field theory framework for deuteron decay, including next-to-leading order corrections and their relation to previous models.

Findings

Deuteron decay rate approximates sum of free proton and neutron decay rates.

Nuclear corrections are estimated to be at the few-percent level.

First nuclear correction involves an undetermined low-energy constant.

Abstract

We calculate the lifetime of the deuteron from dimension-six quark operators that violate baryon number by one unit. We construct an effective field theory for $|\Delta B|=1$ interactions that give rise to nucleon and $\Delta B=1$ deuteron decay in a systematic expansion. We show that up to and including next-to-leading order the deuteron decay rate is given by the sum of the decay rates of the free proton and neutron. The first nuclear correction is expected to contribute at the few-percent level and comes with an undetermined low-energy constant. We discuss its relation to earlier potential-model calculations.