Dark Matter Induced Nucleon Decay Through the Neutron Portal
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 and to constrain dark matter induced nucleon decays. For GeV-scale dark matter, we obtain lower bounds of 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.
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