Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-groups-and-representations-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2024/4/e/solution
Past exam of the groups and representations course of the University of Oxford 2024 4 e Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
Among the representations in c, the of occurs in the of , while the simplest source of is . Thus the economical direct sum containing the prescribed family isThe extra multiplets are one and one trivial representation. Calling a representation does not require it to be an irreducible representation; none of the five individual choices in c contains both required summands.
There is a further physical qualification if this is to be the entire chiral matter content of a consistent grand unified theory. Merely containing one Standard Model family does not guarantee cancellation of the cubic gauge anomaly. In the convention , one has and , so the displayed sum has . With these types of representations, the minimal anomaly-free completion is insteadBeyond one family this adds a vectorlike gauge spectrum and two trivial representations. The conjugate pair can receive a mass after the appropriate symmetry breaking, without removing the remaining family.[ref]
Number of fermion generations from a novel grand unified model by Pritibhajan Byakti and others. Section 3, equations (14)–(16) and the following discussion: the SU(6) anomaly coefficients are -1 and 2, requiring twice as many conjugate fundamentals as antisymmetric rank-two tensors
The first boxed answer addresses representation containment; the second includes the extra consistency condition for a chiral gauge theory. New to topics? Read the docs here!