Abstract
Baryon instability is discussed here because it constitutes a crucial test of grand unified gauge theories. There is, at the present time, neither evidence that baryons are unstable nor any good reasons to suppose that they are not. Conservation of baryon number B or lepton number L must be associated with an invariance principle. Thus, charge conservation is associated with gauge invariance in electromagnetism and the existence of a long range field (i.e. massless photons). If B (or L) were absolutely conserved, we would expect a long-range field coupled to baryon number, and this should show up in Eötvös experiments as a difference in gravitational attraction for objects of the same inertial mass but different baryon number (i.e. of different elements). No such effects are observed. Several experiments — designed originally to do other things — happen to provide limits on proton stability, and we discuss these briefly before turning to the experiments dedicated to the search for nucléon decay.
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Perkins, D.H. (1983). Baryon Stability and Neutrino Oscillations. In: Ellis, J., Ferrara, S. (eds) Unification of Fundamental Particle Interactions II. Ettore Majorana International Science Series, vol 15. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9299-0_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9299-0_12
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