English

Dark Matter Induced Nucleon Decay Through the Neutron Portal

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-03-30 v2

Abstract

The neutron portal operator provides a theoretically motivated connection between the visible and dark sectors and features in several well-studied asymmetric dark matter models. This operator leads to dark matter induced nucleon decays that mimic the experimental signature of "ordinary" nucleon decays. In this work, we reinterpret Super-Kamiokande nucleon decay searches for nπ0νn \rightarrow \pi^0 \nu and pπ+νp \rightarrow \pi^+ \nu to constrain dark matter induced nucleon decays. For GeV-scale dark matter, we obtain lower bounds of O(1 TeV)\mathcal{O}(1~\rm{TeV}) on the scale of the effective neutron portal operator. We also discuss the prospects for future searches at Hyper-Kamiokande and highlight the importance of a dedicated experimental analysis with reduced systematic uncertainties.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.18722,
  title  = {Dark Matter Induced Nucleon Decay Through the Neutron Portal},
  author = {Nicole F. Bell and Peter Cox and Jayden L. Newstead and Michael B. G. Verde},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.18722},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

9 pages, 6 figures, v2: journal version