In a model in which leptons, quarks, and the recently introduced hyperquarks are built up from two fundamental spin 1/2 preons, the standard model weak gauge bosons emerge as preon bound states. In addition, the model predicts a host of new composite
gauge bosons, in particular those responsible for hyperquark and proton decay. Their presence entails a left-right symmetric extension of the standard model weak interactions and a scheme for a partial and grand unification of nongravitational interactions based on respectively the effective gauge groups SU(6)_P and SU(9)_G. This leads to a prediction of the Weinberg angle at low energies in good agreement with experiment. Furthermore, using evolution equations for the effective coupling strengths, we calculate the partial and grand unification scales, the hyperquark mass scale, as well as the mass and decay rate of the lightest hyperhadron.
The antisymmetry requirement of rishon bound state wave functions suggests a new rishon quantum number called M spin. From M spin conservation and the Nussinov-Weingarten-Witten theorem we predict the existence of a stable pseudoscalar dirishonic mes
on, called zeta, that is lighter than the lightest neutrino. Its mass is estimated as m(zeta) = 10^{-9} eV. This particle could make up the major part of cold dark matter in the Universe.
We calculate the strong couplings of pions to the Delta(1232) resonance using a QCD parameterization method that includes in addition to the usual one-quark also two-quark and previously uncalculated three-quark operators. We find that three-quark op
erators are necessary to obtain results consistent with the data and other QCD based baryon structure models. Our results are also in quantitative agreement with a model employing large D state admixtures to the nucleon and Delta wave functions indicating that the pion-nucleon and pion-Delta couplings are sensitive to the spatial shape of these baryons.
In a model in which quarks and leptons are built up from two spin 1/2 preons as fundamental entities, a new class of fermionic bound states (hyperquarks) arises. It turns out that these hyperquarks are necessary to fulfill the t Hooft anomaly constra
int, which then links the number of fermionic generations to the number of colors and hypercolors.
