Exploring Chirality Structure in Nucleon Decay

TL;DR

This paper investigates how measurements of different nucleon decay channels can reveal the chirality structure of baryon-number violating interactions, offering insights into potential new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Contribution

It introduces a method using decay width ratios to probe the chirality structure of nucleon decay interactions within an effective field theory framework.

Findings

Decay width ratios are sensitive to chirality structure.

Both anti-lepton and anti-neutrino channels provide valuable information.

Emphasizes the importance of diverse decay channel searches in experiments.

Abstract

Baryon number conservation is an accidental symmetry in the Standard Model, but its violation is theoretically anticipated, making the search for such processes a promising avenue for discovering new physics. In this paper, we explore how measurements of different nucleon decay channels can reveal the structure of the underlying theory. We investigate the chirality structure of baryon-number violating interactions through lifetime measurements of strangeness-conserving nucleon-decay channels. By employing an effective field theory approach, we demonstrate that the ratio of partial decay widths of proton decay channels, $\Gamma(p \to \eta \ell^+)/\Gamma(p \to \pi^0 \ell^+)$, where $\ell^+$ denotes a positron or anti-muon, is sensitive to this chirality structure. Furthermore, we find that in certain new physics models, both anti-lepton and anti-neutrino channels provide valuable insights into the model's structure. Our results highlight the importance of searching for various decay channels in upcoming nucleon decay experiments.