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

1 Answer
Jacob T.
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" generations"* 4" quarks"*"generation"^-1=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" quarks"* 3" color"=36" quark"*"color"#

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

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