baryoner

Baryoner is a hypothetical subatomic particle introduced in some speculative extensions of the Standard Model. In these proposals, a baryoner carries baryon number B=+1 (with the corresponding antibaryoner carrying B=−1), and is typically a gauge-singlet or color-neutral candidate. The term appears in discussions of baryon-number conservation, baryogenesis, and dark matter models that extend the particle content beyond quarks and leptons.

Proposed properties vary by model. In many scenarios a baryoner is a fermion with spin 1/2 and a mass ranging from the TeV scale to well above, though scalar versions have also been explored. Its interactions are model-dependent: some constructions assign it weak or Yukawa-like couplings to quarks through higher-dimension operators, while others postulate portal couplings to mesons or to a new mediator boson. A common requirement is a mechanism that prevents rapid decay in conflict with observed baryon stability, such as a conserved or approximately conserved baryon-number symmetry.

Phenomenology: If stable on cosmological timescales, a neutral baryoner could contribute to dark matter; however, charged or strongly interacting variants are tightly constrained by collider searches, cosmology, and astrophysical observations. Production mechanisms include thermal production in the early universe or collider production at high-energy accelerators via strong or electroweak processes. Detection strategies depend on the model but may involve missing-energy signals at colliders, atypical jets, or indirect signatures from baryon-number-violating decays.

Status: The baryoner remains speculative and not part of established physics. No experimental evidence has confirmed its existence, and current limits from neutron–antineutron oscillation, proton decay, and cosmological measurements restrict viable parameter space. Ongoing theoretical work continues to assess whether baryoners can address open questions such as the origin of the matter–antimatter asymmetry or the nature of dark matter.