EventsThe 1st International Online Conference on Symmetry
Published
This submission belongs to the session S2. High Energy Physics, Particles and Fields of the event The 1st International Online Conference on Symmetry
Published date
15 Oct, 2026
Academic Editor
author-avatarSergei Odinstov
Citation
Xinhua Ma, Consideration of flavor-related additive quantum numbers, in Proceedings of The 1st International Online Conference on Symmetry, 20 October–22 October 2026, MDPI: Basel, Switzerland
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Consideration of flavor-related additive quantum numbers

1. Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Abstract

Why are the flavor quantum numbers of different quarks (including isospin I and its projection I3, as well as S, C, B*, and T, a total of six) different and cumbersome? Why are flavor quantum numbers not conserved under weak interaction? Why is hypercharge Y a combination of baryon number and some flavor quantum numbers, but appears alongside I3 in the Gell-Mann–Nishijima formula? Starting from the consideration of these questions, the fermion quantum number F was proposed. F is a flavor-related additive quantum number for fermions (including quarks and leptons), conserved under weak, electromagnetic, and strong interactions, and the relation Q/e = (F0 + F)/2 (where F0 is the unit electroweak charge, including baryon number and lepton number) applies to all fermions, making it more universal than the Gell-Mann–Nishijima formula (which applies only to quarks). The selection rules of weak interactions were previously only empirical, but now they can be derived from F conservation, and previously undetected selections can be explained by F non-conservation. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that F/2 and F0 are equivalent to weak isospin (Iw3) and weak hypercharge (Yw) in electroweak theory. Thus, for flavor-related additive quantum numbers in electroweak and strong interactions, only two are needed, namely F and F0, and the Lagrangian has been reformulated using F and F0.

Keywords
flavor
additive quantum number
electroweak theory
conservation law
symmetry
selection rule
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