Which bosons are used to mediate the electroweak force?

All four particles (W⁺, W^-, Z₀, and γ) mediate the EW force.

BBB

 

In a manner of speaking that's true enough (presumably you mean at high energies).

Yes, by definition, since electromagnetic fields are only ever made of photons. These things don't live long enough to bother thinking about their interactions with photons in this classically-oriented way though. You are never going to see one leave a curved track in a magnetic field or anything.

 

Hi Kurros,

The gluons selfinteract because they carry color charges.
Why cannot we use this logic for W ?

 

You can, and they do. This random webpage I found just now http://acfahep.kek.jp/acfareport/node182.html" [Broken] has a list of the "self-interaction" vertices of the electroweak gauge bosons in table 6.1. You will notice there is a WWWW coupling, and also WWZ, among others.

I just threw that in as a bonus. Did the first part of my response not answer your question?

Most of the time I think that's probably true, but W bosons themselves are basically negligible most of the time (the Fermi effective theory will do); In modern high energy collisions, however, it is very important and not at all negligible.

 

Thank you, you are right
I also found
[PLAIN]http://www.rug.nl/kvi/research/kvitrimp/researchdescription/trix/screening_cropped.jpg [Broken]
where a W loop gives a photon

 

Indeed, WWγ is also in the list I mentioned. Things are a bit more complicated than in QCD or QED because the concept of charge is not as "straightforward", since it gets somewhat mangled up during symmetry breaking, but the basic idea is there.