Search for invisible modes of nucleon decay in water with the SNO plus detector



Anderson, M, Andringa, S, Arushanova, E, Asahi, S, Askins, M, Auty, DJ, Back, AR, Barnard, Z, Barros, N, Bartlett, D
et al (show 178 more authors) (2019) Search for invisible modes of nucleon decay in water with the SNO plus detector. PHYSICAL REVIEW D, 99 (3). 032008-.

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Abstract

This paper reports results from a search for nucleon decay through invisible modes, where no visible energy is directly deposited during the decay itself, during the initial water phase of SNO+. However, such decays within the oxygen nucleus would produce an excited daughter that would subsequently deexcite, often emitting detectable gamma rays. A search for such gamma rays yields limits of 2.5×1029  y at 90% Bayesian credibility level (with a prior uniform in rate) for the partial lifetime of the neutron, and 3.6×1029  y for the partial lifetime of the proton, the latter a 70% improvement on the previous limit from SNO. We also present partial lifetime limits for invisible dinucleon modes of 1.3×1028  y for nn, 2.6×1028  y for pn and 4.7×1028  y for pp, an improvement over existing limits by close to 3 orders of magnitude for the latter two.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: 13 pages, 6 figures
Uncontrolled Keywords: Invisible decays, Particle decays, Rare decays, Cherenkov detectors, Neutrino detectors, Particles & fields, Nuclear physics
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 13 Mar 2019 15:54
Last Modified: 19 Jan 2023 00:57
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.99.032008
Open Access URL: https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/Phys...
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3034043