Gluons Definition and 9 Discussions

A gluon () is an elementary particle that acts as the exchange particle (or gauge boson) for the strong force between quarks. It is analogous to the exchange of photons in the electromagnetic force between two charged particles. In layman's terms, they "glue" quarks together, forming hadrons such as protons and neutrons.
In technical terms, gluons are vector gauge bosons that mediate strong interactions of quarks in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Gluons themselves carry the color charge of the strong interaction. This is unlike the photon, which mediates the electromagnetic interaction but lacks an electric charge. Gluons therefore participate in the strong interaction in addition to mediating it, making QCD significantly harder to analyze than quantum electrodynamics (QED).

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  1. Cody Livengood

    B Is there an experiment that shows strong force grows with distance?

    Is there an experiment that shows strong force grows with distance?
  2. Cody Livengood

    B How do we know gluons exist?

    I understand how the existence of quarks is inferred from the three particle-emitting cones or jets and by the quarks’ ability to deflect particles passing through the composite particle, but I don’t see how the existence of gluons is conclusively demonstrated by this rather than just being an...
  3. ohwilleke

    I Has photoproduction of gluons been observed?

    I am wondering if a process with an initial state of two photons leading to an end state with two (or more) gluons has been observed. I have seen some papers (like this one) that seem to suggest that this is the case, but none of them say so as clearly as I would like to be confident that this...
  4. S

    B Photon, gluon, Higgs

    The photon and the gluon in the Standard Model do not interact with the Higgs field and are hence massless and travel at the speed of light. Is there a simple explanation why these two elementary particles are the exceptions?
  5. Paul Colby

    I Gluon creation and annihilation operators

    Hi, When one quantizes EM the resulting gauge boson, the photon, ends up being its own antiparticle. From what I read of gluons, they have anti particles. I can follow how anti particles come about quantizing a complex-valued field like that for electrons. For the spin 1/2 case non-interacting...
  6. Sophrosyne

    I Why are gluons considered to be elementary particles?

    Gluons are often depicted as fundamental particles in the Standard Model. But in looking at their mechanism, it seems they are not really fundamental particles in the sense that they are fundamental, indivisible, building blocks. They are mesons- a composite quark-antiquark pair, where their...
  7. D

    Why can't there be other Boson particle clusters

    I most recently heard about the new mathematics that help predict glueballs properties better. I had the really strange question of, why can't all other bosons have a cluster particle, like the glueball. Is it due to there force strength over distance or am I missing something.
  8. J

    How are the quarks in a proton or neutron held together?

    I've been trying to find a source for this somewhere, but I always end up with different sources explaining what holds protons and neutrons together in the nucleus of an atom. I know that the gluons hold them together, but I'm not sure exactly how they do this, and what type of transfers occur...
  9. OdysseasTS

    Schools Beamline for schools, Greek Delegation

    Hey! So I found this ( http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2014/11/beamline-schools-competition-2015-launches-today ) and my high school's physics teachers liked the concept! So I've created a team to participate in this years contest. We were thinking to do something relevant with antimatter...
    • OdysseasTS
    • Thread
    • antimatter cern experiment experiment design experimental physics gluon gluons lhc physics
    • Replies: 2
    • Forum: STEM Academic Advising
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