Implications of Flavor Symmetries for Baryon Number Violation

TL;DR

This paper systematically classifies dimension-six baryon-number-violating operators in the SMEFT under various flavor-symmetry assumptions, exploring their phenomenology, constraints, and possible UV completions, highlighting scenarios with TeV-scale BNV.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive classification of BNV operators considering flavor symmetries and links EFT operators to potential UV completions, advancing understanding of baryon number violation.

Findings

Proton decay constraints can be compatible with multi-TeV BNV scales in certain flavor scenarios.

Identifies UV completions where EFT may not fully capture the underlying dynamics.

Flavor symmetries influence the phenomenology and constraints of BNV operators.

Abstract

In the Standard Model, baryon number is an accidental symmetry, whose violation would constitute unambiguous evidence of new physics, with proton decay providing its most prominent experimental signature. At the same time, the peculiar structure of flavor can serve as a guiding principle for exploring possible new-physics effects. In this work, we present a systematic classification of dimension-six baryon-number-violating (BNV) SMEFT operators across several flavor-symmetry assumptions and analyze the resulting phenomenology. Interestingly, in certain flavor scenarios the non-trivial interplay with tiny neutrino masses leads to proton-decay constraints compatible with BNV scales in the multi-TeV range. Finally, we complement the EFT analysis by identifying one-particle UV completions of the BNV operators, revealing scenarios in which the leading-order EFT description may not fully account for their underlying dynamics.