How many types of quarks are there and what are their names?

1 Answer
Mar 17, 2018

There are 12 different quarks in total. The number rises to 36 if you take the color charge into account.

Explanation:

Like leptons, quarks are divided into three generations.

Screenshot of the Wikipedia Page: Generation (particle physics)

Each generation contains four quarks- two quarks and two antiquarks.

Each quark is assigned a flavor:
up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom.

Antiquarks are named respectively- for example, the antiparticle of an up quark is named anti-up.

So there are
3 generations4 quarksgeneration1=12 quarks

Taking the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) into account will triple the number. By the QCD model, quarks have three different "colors" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_charge)
Red, Green and Blue for quarks, and
Anti-Red (Cyan), Anti-Green (Magenta), and Anti-blue (Yellow) for the respective antiquarks.

Fields due to color charges, as in quarks (G is the gluon field strength tensor), from Wikimedia Commons

So that gives 12 quarks3 color=36 quarkcolor

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_%28particle_physics%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_charge

Image Attribution:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Qcd_fields_field_(physics)svg