Nucleon decays into three leptons plus a kaon

Abstract

We systematically investigate baryon-number-violating (BNV) nucleon decays into three leptons and a kaon within the framework of low-energy effective field theory (LEFT). We identify all kinematically allowed four-body decay modes involving a $K^+$ or $K^0$ meson and derive their decay widths induced by local dimension-9 operators in terms of the LEFT Wilson coefficients. These results are obtained by classifying the relevant operators, which contain three lepton and three quark fields, including one strange quark, according to their transformation properties under the chiral symmetry group, matching them onto chiral perturbation theory. By reanalyzing existing experimental data, we establish stringent bounds on the partial lifetimes of these four-body decay modes and derive corresponding constraints on the dimension-9 Wilson coefficients. Our results provide a convenient EFT framework for connecting the underlying BNV interactions to experimental searches for these exotic nucleon decays.