I would like to describe briefly how this model was developed. In my early years of professional work as a physicist the composition of elementary particles intrigued me as a kind of a puzzle. The idea that all particles may be composed of a certain number of merely four fundamental components emerged in the year 1962. The foundations of the model are thus even older than the quark concept. In 1963 I wrote some papers on that idea. I had also a seminar in the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Øež. However, my arguments were unconvincing. Particularly, I did not realize that the second „charge” of the fundamental components may be the baryon number. Then I ceased to think about it and it lied in my archives for 45 years.
For some definite reasons which are irrelevant at this place I remembered this my old “discovery” in June 2008. I found the old notes and papers and resumed thinking on that. During several months I made computer calculations searching for such compositions of particles which would fit to the known decay schemes in an optimal way. Initially the number of combinations taken into account was approximately 2 million but gradually the number of suitable possibilities decreased rapidly. In order to get agreement for all observed decay schemes of „ordinary” particles, the „lepton number conservation” had to be modified, i.e. it turned out to be necessary to change the identity of neutrinos in some of the decay schemes.
The result at this stage was the Table 1 (initially without antibaryons) and I gained also a strong conviction that “there is something real in it” since the obtained optimal combination of compositions was statistically far behind the normal distribution of the remaining combinations. This was the first “breakthrough”. In September and October 2008 I wrote my first paper and tried to contact some persons. I also attempted to publish the result but without success.
Since some experts insisted that the quark model is a fact without any question, I started to study this model. Until then I was unable to name even the three lightest quarks or their symbols, let alone their “flavors”. When I wrote the quark compositions of hadrons, i.e. the ud', u's, udd, uud, etc., and started to compare them with my 4C [abcd] compositions, immediately, just within one hour a second “breakthrough” took place. I found a clear affinity between quarks and my 4C components, i.e. the equations (5) and (7) which express their mutual relations. It was a striking fact, that those relations turned out to be valid for all “ordinary” hadrons and thus not a single change in Table 1 was necessary. Only the anti-baryons were still out of this scheme.
With this problem of a proper composition of anti-baryons I wrestled for several months because I could not find the valid particle-antiparticle symmetry which would be universal for all kinds of particles. At last in early 2009 with the help of the anti-quark composition of anti-baryons I succeeded to find the universal symmetry valid for all “ordinary” leptons and hadrons, namely the symmetry: [abcd] <> [s/2–a,s/2–b,s/2–c,s/2–d]. This was a third “breakthrough” since it revealed that Q and B are not the only “charges” or “flavors” of the 4C components and that some others (e.g. S, Iz) have to be added. With this proper symmetry it was also possible to find the invertible pairs of 4C components: c, n, b and c', n', b', and thus to bring the model to its present state.
It seems to me that the main argument in favor of the 4C model is that starting from merely four fundamental components their conservation in all interactions can account (with the proposed modifications) for the conservation of charge, baryon number, lepton number(s), strangeness, and isospin for both leptons and hadrons. This cannot be an accidental, unimportant finding. J. K.
J. K.