Abstract:
The Standard Model of particle physics, while remarkably successful, leaves several fundamental parameters unexplained, including the existence of three fermion generations and the origins of their mass hierarchy. This has motivated the exploration of theories beyond the Standard Model, including models of quark and lepton substructure. Historical attempts, known as preon models, were largely unsuccessful, primarily due to an unresolved mass paradox. This paper introduces the Brane-Constituent Quark (BCQ) hypothesis, a novel framework for quark substructure situated within M-theory. It is posited that quarks are not elementary point-particles but are composite quantum systems, each formed by a configuration of three one-dimensional Dirichlet branes (D1-branes). Within this model, the fundamental properties of quarks—such as SU(3) color charge, spin, flavor, and fractional electric charge—emerge naturally from the dynamics of open superstrings attached to these D1-branes and the geometric arrangement of the branes within compactified extra dimensions. The SU(3) color group is identified with the U(3) gauge theory on a stack of three coincident D1-branes, while the three fermion generations are proposed to arise from the topological intersection numbers of brane configurations. Crucially, the BCQ hypothesis resolves the mass paradox of traditional preon models by deriving mass from the intrinsic tension of the branes and the vibrational energy of strings, rather than from the kinetic energy of confined constituents. The model offers a new physical picture for QCD phenomena like confinement and asymptotic freedom and predicts new experimental signatures at high energy scales, such as quark resonances, providing a testable framework for physics beyond the Standard Model.
Yıldırım, E. (2025). The Brane-Constituent Quark (BCQ) Hypothesis: A D1-Brane Model for Quark Substructure within M-Theory. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17036354
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