An anomaly-free baryonic completion of the Standard Model

Abstract

We construct an explicit anomaly-free completion of a gauged baryon-number symmetry. The new gauge factor is \(U(1)_{\tilde B}\): when restricted to the Standard Model fields its charge \({\tilde B}\) coincides with ordinary baryon number, whereas in the full theory it becomes an extended baryonic symmetry acting on both the Standard Model and a secluded sector. We show that anomaly cancellation alone leaves a broad class of solutions, but that requiring consistent symmetry breaking, viable decays of the exotic states, the absence of stable coloured relics, a neutral dark matter candidate protected by a \(Z_2^{\rm DM}\) parity, and improved high-scale gauge-coupling unification strongly constrains the structure of the model. These requirements necessitate enlarging the minimal secluded fermion sector by additional scalar fields and Yukawa interactions, giving rise to a light pseudoscalar that plays an important role in the dark matter phenomenology. We implement the resulting renormalisable model in SARAH and analyse its spectrum and phenomenology with SPheno, MicrOMEGAs, SModelS, and HiggsTools. We identify viable regions of parameter space containing a heavy baryonic Z', an even heavier secluded sector, a neutral dark matter candidate compatible with relic-density and direct-detection constraints, and improved gauge-coupling evolution relative to the Standard Model. In these regions, the relic abundance is determined either by co-annihilation with nearby secluded states or by annihilation into light pseudoscalars from the extended scalar sector.