Insights on the Cosmic Origin of Matter from Proton Stability

Abstract

We investigate the phenomenology of a model in which the proton is rendered absolutely stable by an IR mechanism that remains robust against unknown quantum gravity effects. A linear combination of baryon number and lepton flavors is gauged and spontaneously broken to a residual ${\mathbb{Z}}_9$ discrete gauge symmetry enforcing a strict selection rule: $\Delta B=0(\mathrm{mod}3)$. Despite its minimal field content, the model successfully accounts for established empirical evidence of physics beyond the SM. High-scale symmetry breaking simultaneously provides a seesaw mechanism explaining the smallness of neutrino masses, minimal thermal leptogenesis, and a viable phenomenology of the majoron as dark matter. Any cosmic string-wall network remaining after inflation is unstable for numerous charge assignments. Lepton flavor non-universality, central to the construction, leads to predictive neutrino textures testable via oscillation experiments, neutrinoless double beta decay, and cosmology. The model motivates searches in $X$- and $\gamma$-ray lines, neutrino telescopes, and predicts CMB imprints.

arXiv comment25 pages, 9 figures; v2: matches the published version

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