Leptonic octets and heavy-lepton decays in an SU(3) gauge theory

Unified weak-electromagnetic gauge theories based on the group SU(3) are discussed in some detail. In particular, the consequences of assigning the electron, the muon, and the newly discovered lepton of Perl et al. to an octet are explored. Almost uniquely, this leads to the prediction that the Perl particle decays preferentially into muons and neutrinos rather than into electrons and neutrinos. This means that in the e+e- annihilation experiments there should be more μ+μ- pairs than e+e- pairs, after subtraction of background. Such a situation would be very difficult to achieve naturally in the framework of an SU(2) x U(1) gauge theory. The hadron sector of the theory and neutral-current reactions are also discussed as well as some general considerations on the construction of weak-interaction gauge theories with large groups