Insights on the Cosmic Origin of Matter from Proton Stability

TL;DR

This paper proposes a minimal model where proton stability is guaranteed by a discrete gauge symmetry, linking it to neutrino masses, dark matter, and observable cosmic phenomena, with testable predictions across multiple experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel IR mechanism with a discrete gauge symmetry that ensures proton stability and connects it to neutrino physics, dark matter, and cosmological signatures.

Findings

Proton is absolutely stable due to a residual $ extbf{Z}_9$ symmetry.

Model explains small neutrino masses via a seesaw mechanism.

Predicts observable signals in neutrino experiments, gamma-ray lines, and CMB imprints.

Abstract

We investigate the phenomenology of a model in which the proton is rendered absolutely stable by an IR mechanism that remains robust against unknown quantum gravity effects. A linear combination of baryon number and lepton flavors is gauged and spontaneously broken to a residual $\mathbb{Z}_9$ discrete gauge symmetry enforcing a strict selection rule: $\Delta B = 0\,(\mathrm{mod}\,3)$. Despite its minimal field content, the model successfully accounts for established empirical evidence of physics beyond the SM. High-scale symmetry breaking simultaneously provides a seesaw mechanism explaining the smallness of neutrino masses, minimal thermal leptogenesis, and a viable phenomenology of the majoron as dark matter. Any cosmic string-wall network remaining after inflation is unstable for numerous charge assignments. Lepton flavor non-universality, central to the construction, leads to predictive neutrino textures testable via oscillation experiments, neutrinoless double beta decay, and cosmology. The model motivates searches in $X$- and $\gamma$-ray lines, neutrino telescopes, and predicts CMB imprints.