A novel viewpoint of Proton Decay

TL;DR

This paper revises the standard model's proton decay operators within a bilepton-extended framework, suggesting potential significant increases in proton lifetime due to quark family mixing effects.

Contribution

It introduces a modified notation for d=6 operators in the bilepton extension, highlighting possible proton lifetime enhancements and analyzing the impact on neutrino mass operators.

Findings

Potential orders of magnitude increase in proton lifetime.

Family mixing effects influence decay operator strengths.

Standard family structure preserved in neutrino mass operators.

Abstract

We update the standard model d=6 operators of Weinberg (1979) using a modified notation which accommodates the bilepton extension of the standard model. This may lead to an enhancement of the proton lifetime by orders of magnitude due to mixing first-family with third-family quarks. By contrast, d=5 operators which can provide Majorana neutrino masses retain the family structure of their counterparts in the standard model.