ANOMALY-FREE GAUGED U(1)' IN LOCAL SUPERSYMMETRY AND BARYON-NUMBER VIOLATION

The supersymmetric extension of the standard model suffers from a problem of baryon-number violation. Discrete (and global) symmetries introduced to protect the proton are unstable under gravitational effects. We add a gauged U(1)(x) to the standard model gauge group G(SM) and require it to be anomaly-free. As new (chiral) superfields we only allow G(SM)-singlets in order to maintain the good unification predictions. We find the most general set of solutions for the rational singlet charges. We embed our models in local supersymmetry and study the breaking of supersymmetry and U(1)(x) to determine M(x). We determine the full non-renormalizable and gauge invariant Lagrangian for the different solutions. We expect any effective theory to contain baryon- and lepton-number violating terms of dimension four suppressed by powers of M(X)/M(Pl). The power is predicted by the U(1)(x) charges. We find consistency with the experimental bounds on the proton lifetime and on the neutrino masses. We also expect all supersymmetric models to have an unstable but longlived lightest supersymmetric particle. Consistency with underground experiments on upward going muons leads to stricter constraints than the proton decay experiments. These are barely satisfied.