Fully confined events indicative of proton decay in the Kolar Gold Fields detector

Abstract

Three events have been recorded in the Kolar Gold Field experiment with tracks fully confined to the detector volume. It is shown that their characteristics are in conformity with the decay of bound nucleons and that the background due to neutrino interactions is extremely small. Based on these as well as the events reported earlier, we tentatively suggest a mean lifetime of about 7 × 10 30 yr for nucleons bound in iron nuclei.