Why are there no fractionally charged hadrons?

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SUMMARY

Fractionally charged quarks cannot combine to form hadrons with non-integer electrical charges due to the requirement of color singlet states in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Hadrons must be color neutral, and any combination of quarks that results in a fractional charge fails to achieve this, as they cannot form a color singlet when the number of quarks does not satisfy the condition N mod 3 = 0. Consequently, the confinement of colored states prevents the existence of such hadrons.

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If quarks are fractionally charged, why don't they ever combine to form hadrons with non-integer electrical charges?
 
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Can you give an example? What quark combination will do this?
 
MrRobotoToo said:
If quarks are fractionally charged, why don't they ever combine to form hadrons with non-integer electrical charges?
A hadron with fractional charge cannot be a color singulet; but colored states are dynamically suppressed by QCD due to color confinement (you can try to couple N quarks with N mod 3 > 0; you will never succeed in creating a color singulet).
 
tom.stoer said:
A hadron with fractional charge cannot be a color singulet; but colored states are dynamically suppressed by QCD due to color confinement (you can try to couple N quarks with N mod 3 > 0; you will never succeed in creating a color singulet).

Thanks for the response. I think I understand it now.
 

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