Insights from Binary Pulsars and Laboratories into Baryon Number Violation: Implications for GeV Dark Matter

Abstract

Rare processes in laboratory and within astrophysical environments can be highly sensitive probes of baryon-number violating interactions at the TeV scale. We demonstrate the power of neutron stars to constrain baryon number violation by considering a minimal extension of the standard model involving a TeV-mass scalar mediator and a GeV scale Majorana fermion $\psi$. We find that a $\Delta B = 2$ mass-loss process in binary pulsar systems via $n \to \gamma \psi$ and the subsequent scattering $\psi n \to \pi^- K^+$ places stringent constraints on the model parameter space. These limits will become much stronger, due to the possibility of $\Lambda \rightarrow \gamma \psi$ decays at the tree level, if the neutron star equation of state is hyperonic. We compare these constraints with ongoing and future collider experiments, $n-\bar{n}$ oscillations, and dinucleon decay searches at future large-scale neutrino experiments, finding that the binary pulsars bounds on couplings are significantly tighter for specific flavor combinations.