“Virtual effects of excited quarks as probes of a possible new hardonic mass scale”

The effects of $\text{spin}\text{-}\text{3}\text{2}$ excited quarks are considered as probes of a possible new hadronic mass-scale Λ. A specific model is developed which describes virtual $\text{spin}\text{-}\text{3}\text{2}$ quarks of mass of O(Λ). Induced effects, which are corrections to the standard SU(2) × U(1) electroweak model, include right-handed charged currents and flavor changing neutral currents. A model-independent classification of all SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1) invariant quark operators of dimension six or less is also presented. Ambiguities in converting this analysis and existing experiments to a definitive lower-bound for Λ are discussed. It is found, depending on the strength of certain Higgs couplings and the underlying global flavor symmetries in the absence of Higgs couplings, that a lower bound as small as Λ > 500 GeV or as large as Λ > 100 TeV is possible.