Colloquia

One of the most surprising predictions of the immensely successful Standard Model of particle physics is the strict conservation of baryon number B. This seemingly accidental symmetry ensures the stability of protons and, by extension, of all matter. Simultaneously, B must be broken to explain the apparent dominance of matter over antimatter in our universe. This forces us to investigate the possibility – and necessity – of baryon number violation. In many well-motivated Standard-Model extensions, such as grand unified theories or supersymmetry, B is indeed violated, inducing a slow decay of protons. These models have dominated the theoretical and experimental investigations of baryon number violation for 50 years. In this talk, we will explore alternative signatures by carefully constructing B-violating models that have been overlooked thus far, and how they could be observed at the next generation of deep-underground detectors: JUNO, Hyper-Kamiokande, and DUNE.