Speaker
Description
Scalar leptoquarks are popular mediators in new physics explanations of the experimental anomalies in $ b \to s \mu^+ \mu^-$ decays and the muon $g-2$; however, the non-observation of charged lepton flavor violation and proton decay impose severe constraints on their interactions. We present a novel protection mechanism in the form of a gauged, lepton-flavored U(1) symmetry, which is broken by a scalar condensate to accommodate neutrino masses with a type-I seesaw. An exact remnant discrete $ Z_9 $ symmetry renders the proton exactly stable to all orders in the effective field theory expansion. This framework easily accommodates leptoquark explanations of the aforementioned anomalies without the dangerous interactions.