A Note on Charge Quantization Through Anomaly Cancellation

Abstract

In a minimal extension of the Standard Model, in which new neutral fermions have been introduced, we show that the requirement of vanishing anomalies fixes the hypercharges of all fermions uniquely. This naturally leads to electric charge quantization in this minimal scenario which has features similar to the Standard Model: invariance under the gauge group $SU(2)_L\otimes U(1)_Y$, conservation of the total lepton number and masslessness for the ordinary neutrinos. Such minimal models might arise as low-energy realizations of some heterotic superstring models or $SO(10)$ grand unified theories.