Charge Values of Elementary Particles

The properties of elementary particles show regular patterns, especially in their electrical charges. How can these regularities be explained?

The Standard Model of particle physics recognizes 48 fermions, which are divided into three generations of leptons and quarks. There are two leptons and two quarks in each generation, with each quark also occurring in three color variants. In addition, each particle has an antiparticle whose charge values have the opposite sign.

The elementary particles are characterized by their rest mass, their spin and some quantum numbers, which are used to describe the charge values for the electric, weak and strong interaction. The 48 fermions all have a spin of 1/2, but their quantum numbers for the charge values differ, although there are regular patterns here. These regularities can be seen particularly clearly in the electric charge:

• All known elementary particles carry an electric charge equal to the charge of the electron up to a factor of 0, ±⅓, ±⅔ or ±1.
• Each particle has an antiparticle whose electric charge has the opposite sign, while the rest masses are identical.
• The three generations of particles are identical in their charge values, only the masses at rest differ and increase from generation to generation.
• Quarks and leptons occur in two lines each, and the electric charge of two sister particles differs by a whole elementary charge e (electron: -e / neutrino: 0; down quark: -⅓e / up quark: +⅔e).
• Only particles and antiparticles that do not carry an integer electric charge are subject to the strong interaction.

These regularities are all the more remarkable because another characteristic property of elementary particles, their mass at rest, does not form fractions or multiples of some fundamental value. The fact that the values of the electric charges of all known elementary particles are in the ratio of small integers to each other suggests that they are not a pure product of chance, but that the same mechanism is active in all elementary particles, which generates the electric charge and determines the charge value of the respective elementary particle. According to the theory of the electroweak interaction, the electric charge is made up of the charge values of the weak interaction, which are called the weak hypercharge and the weak isospin. In addition, the fact that the strong interaction only affects particles and antiparticles that do not carry an integer electric charge suggests a previously unrecognized link between the electromagnetic and strong interactions.

This raises the question of whether a model can be found that explains the electric charges and other quantum numbers of elementary particles in terms of an internal connection.

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