New chiral structures for baryon number violating nucleon decays
Abstract
We examine the most general nucleon decay interactions that involve three light quarks without being acted upon by a derivative. We identify four generic operator structures that correspond to the irreducible representations in the chiral group SU(3) L SU(3) R of QCD, \8 L 1 R, 3 L 3 R, 6 L 3 R, 10 L 1 R\, plus their chirality partners under the interchange of chiralities L R. While half of them have been extensively discussed in the literature, the other half, 6 L(R) 3 R(L) and 10 L(R) 1 R(L), are identified for the first time. We perform chiral matching for these interactions at the leading chiral order and find that each has a unique chiral realization in terms of the octet baryons and pseudoscalars. Notably, the chiral interaction in the 6 L(R) 3 R(L) representation appears at the same chiral order as those of the known ones, while the one in the 10 L(R) 1 R(L) representation appears at a higher chiral order. These new structures are prevalent in effective field theories and ultraviolet models, and they offer novel experimental avenues to search for baryon number violating nucleon decays.
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