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
W and Z bosons the pillars of the Standard Model of particle physics, particularly given the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson by the CMS and ATLAS experiments. The model predicts that W and Z bosons have the following masses: where g is the SU(2) gauge coupling, g' is U(1) gauge coupling, and v is the Higgs vacuum expectation value. Unlike beta decay, the observation of neutral current interactions that involve particles requires huge investments in particle accelerators and detectors, such as are available in only a few high-energy physics laboratories in the world (and then only after 1983). This is because Z-bosons behave