title: Nucleon decay into a dark sector.
abstract: A sub-GeV dark sector fermion X can have baryon-number-violating interactions induced by high-scale physics, leading to nucleon decay into X+meson and neutron→X+photon. Such processes can mimic standard search modes containing a neutrino, but have different kinematics and may have escaped detection. If a dark force mediated by a light vector Z(d) acts on X, depending on parameters, neutron→X+Z(d) can be important. In typical scenarios, Z(d) decays into ℓ(+)ℓ(-), where ℓ=e,μ, with an order unity branching fraction. Nucleon decay searches can potentially uncover new dark states that are otherwise inaccessible, due to their negligible coupling to ordinary matter or cosmological abundance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA.
authors.forename: Hooman
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Davoudiasl