Quark Mass Hierarchy and Flavor Mixing Puzzles

Abstract

The fact that quarks of the same electric charge possess a mass hierarchy is a big puzzle in particle physics, and it must be highly correlated with the hierarchy of quark flavor mixing. This review article is intended to provide a brief description of some important issues regarding quark masses, flavor mixing and CP violation. A comparison between the salient features of quark and lepton flavor mixing structures is also made.