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A baryon containing a charm quark. For one charm and two up/down quarks in the spatial ground state, light-diquark spin-isospin correlation gives the isosinglet Lambda c baryon and the isotriplet Sigma c baryon families.

Use units in which the proton electric charge is one. The up quark and down quark both have spin angular momentum $1/2$ and form a flavour isospin doublet:Their antiquarks have the opposite charges and third components of isospin, with the same total isospin and spin. This is strong-interaction flavour isospin, not the chiral weak isospin assignment.

The Clebsch-Gordan decomposition for SU2 says that spins $j_1,j_2$ combine into every $j$ from $|j_1-j_2|$ to $j_1+j_2$ in unit steps. It applies independently to spin and isospin. ThusBefore exchange symmetry is imposed, three light quarks have total spin $S=1/2$ or $3/2$, and total isospin $I=1/2$ or $3/2$; the doublet occurs twice in the uncoupled tensor cube. With zero orbital angular momentum, $J=S$.

Physical baryons must also be colour singlets. The three-quark colour singlet is completely antisymmetric, so the Pauli exclusion principle requires symmetric spatial-spin-flavour symmetry. For a symmetric spatial S-wave state, the spin-flavour factor is symmetric. The $I=3/2$ flavour quartet is symmetric, whereas the $I=1/2$ flavour doublets have mixed permutation symmetry; the spin factors have the analogous symmetries. Symmetric flavour therefore pairs with symmetric spin, while the two mixed factors pair in their unique symmetric combination. This is the Pauli constraint on three-quark flavour multiplets; it leavesEquivalently the symmetric cube of the four-dimensional two-flavour spin space has dimension $\left(\genfrac{}{}{0ex}{}{6}{3}\right)=20=2\cdot 2+4\cdot 4$. The unmatched spin-isospin pairings in the bare tensor product do not describe the usual symmetric-spatial ground-state baryons.

For three light quarks, charge addition gives $Q=I_3+1/2$. The observed nucleon doublet and Delta baryon quartet have the following assignments; the listed contents specify flavour counts, not the complete spin-flavour wavefunction:The proton and neutron have $J=1/2$; all four Delta baryons have $J=3/2$. These states have positive parity in the zero-orbital ground-state model.

For a light quark-antiquark meson, both spin and flavour doublets combine into singlet plus triplet. In a conventional choice of phases the flavour states areEach row can have $J=0$ or $1$, since the two constituent spins couple to zero or one. At zero orbital angular momentum their parity is negative, following the meson parity and charge conjugation rule $P=(-1{)}^{L+1}$. The spin-zero isotriplet is the pion multiplet, and the spin-one isotriplet the rho meson multiplet. The nonstrange spin-one isosinglet is the idealized omega meson flavour direction. Its spin-zero counterpart is the nonstrange direction contributing to the eta and eta prime mesons; it is not automatically a physical mass eigenstate once other flavours and mixing are included.

Now introduce an isospin-zero quark $h$ of spin $1/2$ and charge $q_h$. For baryons with one isospin-singlet quark, the two light quarks have either the antisymmetric flavour singlet $[ud]=(ud-du)/\sqrt{2}$ or the symmetric triplet $uu,\{ud\},dd$. Their colour pair is antisymmetric. Hence light-diquark spin-isospin correlation gives $S_{ud}=0$ for $I=0$ and $S_{ud}=1$ for $I=1$. Coupling the $h$ spin producesThe three triplet rows have $I_3=1,0,-1$. For a strange-like charge $q_h=-1/3$, these are the neutral spin-one-half Lambda baryon, the spin-one-half Sigma baryon triplet of charges $1,0,-1$, and its spin-three-half starred partners. For a charm-like charge $q_h=2/3$, they are the spin-one-half Lambda c baryon of charge $1$, and the Sigma c baryon triplets of charges $2,1,0$ with spins $1/2$ and $3/2$. Both possible new charge assignments have thus been covered; charge-conjugate antibaryons have opposite charges and unchanged $I,J$.

The meson doublets with one isospin-singlet quark are $h\overline{u},h\overline{d}$, withFor $q_h=-1/3$ their charges are $-1,0$, giving $K^{-},{\overline{K}}^0$-like kaons and their vector partners; the conjugate doublet has $u\overline{h},d\overline{h}$ and charges $1,0$. For $q_h=2/3$ the charges are $0,1$, giving $D^0,D^{+}$-like D mesons and their vector partners, with charge-conjugate partners as well. Finally a hidden-flavour pair $h\overline{h}$, if included, is neutral with $I=0$ and $J=0$ or $1$. These are quantum-number classifications; charge and isospin alone do not determine particle masses or mixing angles.

The symmetric light pairs $uu,\{ud\},dd$ with one charm quark give isospin one and charges $2,1,0$. Their light spin is one; coupling the charm spin gives the $J=1/2$ Sigma c baryon triplet and $J=3/2$ excited-spin triplet conventionally marked by a star.