Impact of new physics on B + L violation at colliders

Abstract

Abstract In the Standard Model, chiral electroweak anomalies predict nonperturbative interactions that violate baryon (B) plus lepton number (L). The potential observability of these processes at colliders has been amply discussed in the literature, mostly focusing on the impact of the accompanying boson emission, which contributes to the cross sections through an exponential function of the center-of-mass energy. We focus instead on the impact of exotic fermions charged under SU(2)L, which not only can be emitted in these processes, but also affect the non-exponential contributions to the cross-sections. Estimating the latter using instanton techniques, we find sizable effects that suggest that if B + L-violating processes are ever seen at colliders, they may involve physics beyond the Standard Model.