Vector boson Vector boson In particle physics, a vector boson is a boson with the spin equal to 1. The vector bosons regarded as elementary particles in the Standard Model are the gauge bosons, the force carriers of fundamental interactions: the photon of electromagnetism, the W and Z bosons of the weak interaction, and the gluons of the strong interaction. Some composite particles are vector bosons, for instance any vector meson (quark and antiquark). During the 1970s and 1980s, intermediate vector bosons—vector bosons of "intermediate" mass (a mass between the two of the vector mesons)—drew much attention in particle physics. The Z
Spin (physics) cannot be two identical fermions simultaneously having the same quantum numbers (meaning, roughly, having the same position, velocity and spin direction). In contrast, bosons obey the rules of Bose–Einstein statistics and have no such restriction, so they may "bunch together" even if in identical states. Also, composite particles can have spins different from their component particles. For example, a helium atom in the ground state has spin 0 and behaves like a boson, even though the quarks and electrons which make it up are all fermions. This has some profound consequences: The spin-statistics theorem states (1) that particles with half-integer