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  What postulates or models have been proposed to fix the number of particle generations?

+ 3 like - 0 dislike
1008 views

I understand that the question of the number of generations, while practically settled experimentally, is an open issue from the point of view of theoretical models. I can only think of two theoretical arguments to set bounds in this number:

  •  to get some CP violation, we need at least 3 generations in the CKM matrix.
  • to keep the sign of the beta function of QCD under control, we can not have more than 16.5 flavours, so 8 generations.

Are there more arguments in the theoretical/phenomenology market, bounding the number of generations in some way? And, is there any that fixes it exactly to three?

asked Aug 29, 2014 in Phenomenology by - (260 points) [ no revision ]

yep, feel free to upvote my old answer there :-D. 

I guess that arguments to select a family of models also match the answer here, if they are able to provide at least a bound in the number of generations.

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