2014/04/30 by Andre de Gouvea, Juan Herrero-Garcia, Andrew Kobach · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.90.016011
published as Phys. Rev. D 90, 016011 (2014) · 12 pages, 1 figure. Improved discussion, references added, results unchanged
arxiv created 2014/08/08 · arxiv updated 2014/08/13
If grand unification is real, searches for baryon-number violation should be included on the list of observables that may reveal information regarding the origin of neutrino masses. Making use of an effective-operator approach and assuming that nature is SU(5) invariant at very short distances, we estimate the consequences of different scenarios that lead to light Majorana neutrinos for low-energy phenomena that violate baryon number minus lepton number (B-L) by two (or more) units, including neutron-antineutron oscillations and B-L violating nucleon decays. We find that, among all possible effective theories of lepton-number violation that lead to nonzero neutrino masses, only a subset is, broadly speaking, consistent with grand unification.