Quarks and Leptons Beyond the Third Generation

Abstract

The possibility of additional quarks and leptons beyond the three generations already established is discussed. The make-up of this Report is (I) Introduction: the motivations for believing that the present litany of elementary fermions is not complete; (II) Quantum Numbers: possible assignments for additional fermions; (III) Masses and Mixing Angles: mass limits from precision electroweak data, vacuum stability and perturbative gauge unification; empirical constraints on mixing angles; (IV) Lifetimes and Decay Modes: their dependence on the mass spectrum and mixing angles of the additional quarks and leptons; the possibility of exceptionally long lifetimes; (V) Dynamical Symmetry Breaking: the significance of the top quark and other heavy fermions for alternatives to the elementary Higgs Boson; (VI) CP Violation: extensions to more generations and how strong CP may be solved by additional quarks; (VII) Experimental Searches: present status and future prospects; (VIII) Conclusions.

139 pages, 27 figures, 267 references, version to appear in Physics Reports