Electroweak Quark–lepton Symmetry and Weak Topological-charge Confinement in the Standard Model with Dirac Neutrinos

The standard electroweak model with Dirac neutrinos is extended by way of the principles of electroweak quark–lepton symmetry and weak topological-charge confinement to account for quark–lepton charge relations which, if not accidental, are indicative of charge structures. A mixing in quarks and leptons of underlying integer local charges with integer weak topological charges associated with an additive group Z3, fixed by the anomaly cancellation requirement, is discussed. It is found that the electroweak difference between topological quarks and leptons is the nonequivalence between the topological vacua of their weak field configurations, produced by a four-instanton which carries the topological charge, induces the universal fractional piece of charge distinguishing quarks from leptons, and breaks the underlying symmetry. The constituent quarks of the standard model appear as coming from topological quarks, via the weak four-instanton event. Dual transitions occur for leptons. It is shown that several other fundamental problems left open in the standard electroweak model with Dirac neutrinos are solved: the one-toone correspondence between quark and lepton flavors, the existence of three generations, the conservation and ungauging of B − L, the electric charge quantization, and the confinement of fractional electric charges.