Nonperturbative proton stability

Proton decay is a generic prediction of GUT models and is therefore an important channel to detect the existence of unification or to set limits on GUT models. Current bounds on the proton lifetime are around 10³³years, which sets stringent limits on the GUT scale. These limits are obtained under “reasonable” assumptions about the size of the hadronic matrix elements. In this paper we present a nonperturbative calculation of the hadronic matrix elements within the chiral bag model of the proton. We argue that there is an exponential suppression of the matrix elements, due to nonperturbative QCD, that stifles proton decay by orders of magnitude—potentially O(10^-10). This suppression is present for small quark masses and is due to the chiral symmetry breaking of QCD. Such a suppression has clear implications for GUT models and could resuscitate several scenarios.