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MrRobotoToo
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If quarks are fractionally charged, why don't they ever combine to form hadrons with non-integer electrical charges?
A hadron with fractional charge cannot be a color singulet; but colored states are dynamically suppressed by QCD due to color confinement (you can try to couple N quarks with N mod 3 > 0; you will never succeed in creating a color singulet).MrRobotoToo said:If quarks are fractionally charged, why don't they ever combine to form hadrons with non-integer electrical charges?
tom.stoer said:A hadron with fractional charge cannot be a color singulet; but colored states are dynamically suppressed by QCD due to color confinement (you can try to couple N quarks with N mod 3 > 0; you will never succeed in creating a color singulet).
Hadrons, which are composed of quarks, cannot have fractional charges because of the fundamental nature of quarks. Quarks have a property called color charge, and they can only exist in combinations of either three quarks (baryons) or a quark and an antiquark (mesons). These combinations always result in integer charges, making fractional charges impossible.
Experimental evidence from high-energy particle colliders, such as the Large Hadron Collider, has consistently shown that quarks and their combinations (hadrons) always have integer charges. Additionally, theoretical models such as quantum chromodynamics (QCD) also support the idea that hadrons cannot have fractional charges.
No, there are no known exceptions to this rule. All observed hadrons have integer charges and there is no evidence to suggest otherwise.
While it is always possible for new particles to be discovered, it is highly unlikely that they would have fractional charges. The theory of QCD, which has been extensively tested and verified, does not allow for the existence of particles with fractional charges.
The fact that hadrons cannot have fractional charges is a fundamental aspect of our understanding of matter. It helps explain the stability of matter and the behavior of subatomic particles. It also plays a crucial role in the Standard Model of particle physics, which describes the interactions between all known particles.