Nucleon decays into one lepton plus two non-strange mesons

TL;DR

This paper provides improved, model-independent bounds on nucleon decay modes involving a lepton and two non-strange mesons, significantly enhancing constraints on baryon number violation.

Contribution

It introduces a global, correlation-based analysis within effective field theory to derive more stringent bounds on nucleon decay channels without assuming single-operator dominance.

Findings

Lower limits on partial lifetimes exceed PDG values by over three orders of magnitude for charged-lepton modes.

First-time constraints established for neutrino modes with lifetimes greater than 10^34 years.

Constraints on two-body decay processes improved by approximately a factor of 2.

Abstract

Nucleon decays into a lepton and two pseudoscalar mesons represent key channels for probing baryon number violation, complementing conventional two-body modes. In this Letter, we model-independently correlate two- and three-body processes within the framework of low-energy effective field theory, performing a global analysis that avoids single-operator-dominance assumption. We derive significantly improved bounds on 15 three-body modes with a lepton ($e^+,\,\mu^+,\hat\nu=\nu/\bar\nu$) and two non-strange mesons ($\pi,\eta$). For charged-lepton modes, our lower limits on partial lifetimes ($\Gamma^{-1}$) surpass current Particle Data Group (PDG) values by more than three orders of magnitude. For 5 (anti)neutrino modes, we establish for the first time $\Gamma^{-1}\gtrsim 10^{34}\,\rm yr$. Additionally, our analysis improves constraints on two-body processes $n\to e^+\pi^-$, $n\to \mu^+\pi^-$, and $p\to \hat\nu \pi^+$ by approximately a factor of 2 compared to the PDG limits. These results highlight the importance of leveraging correlations among different processes to better probe new physics, enabling more stringent constraints on experimentally challenging processes from well-measured ones.