Searching for the Fourth Family Quarks Through Anomalous Decays

Abstract

The flavor democracy hypothesis predicts the existence of the fourth standard model family. Because of the high masses of the fourth family quarks, their anomalous decays could be dominant if certain criteria are met. This will drastically change the search strategy at hadron colliders. We show that the fourth standard model family down quarks with masses up to 400-450 GeV can be observed (or excluded) via anomalous decays by Tevatron.