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

Journal article

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.

Authors: Anderson, M; Andringa, S; Arushanova, E; Biller, SD; Cavalli, L

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Journal: Physical Review D
• Volume: 99
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 032008
• Publication date: 2019-02-20
• Acceptance date: 2019-01-11
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.99.032008
• EISSN: 2470-0029
• ISSN: 2470-0010