2025/11/08 by Mathew Thomas Arun, Arun, Mathew Thomas, M Shyam +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · Computer Science · #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Computational Physics and Python Applications
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2511.06106
Motivated by the stringent experimental bounds on proton lifetime and the need for precise low-energy predictions, there has been renewed interest in the renormalization group (RG) evolution of Wilson coefficients for baryon number violating (BNV) operators and their characteristic new-physics scales. In this work, we analyze the RG running of dimension-6 four-fermion operators in the MS scheme that mediate nucleon decay channels such as p → e+ π0, while systematically accounting for the impact of baryon number conserving (BNC) new-physics that can enter the theory at an intermediate scale as higher-dimensional effective field theory operator. These BNC operators mix with BNV ones at 1-loop and alter the RG flow. The running is performed from the electroweak scale up to representative intermediate scales of 104~GeV, 106~GeV, and 109~GeV, corresponding to possible thresholds for new BNC degrees of freedom. Comparing the RG evolved coefficients with current experimental bounds on nucleon decay lifetimes, we find that the inclusion of BNC-BNV mixing, dominated by top quark loops, can significantly lower the effective proton decay scale to ∼ 107 GeV, thus mitigating the need of a large desert. A Python package is provided to facilitate the RG evolution of nucleon-decay Wilson coefficients, allowing for the inclusion of generic BNC effects.