Gluon Gluon 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
W and Z bosons particles, starting with and , all denote quarks and antiquarks (factor "N" is applied). The various "V" denote the corresponding CKM matrix coefficients. Unitarity of the CKM matrix implies that Z bosons decay into a fermion and its antiparticle. As the Z boson is a mixture of the pre-symmetry-breaking W and B bosons (see weak mixing angle), each vertex factor includes a factor "T" − "Q" sin"θ" where "T" is the third component of the weak isospin of the fermion, "Q "is the electric charge of the fermion (in units of the elementary charge), and "θ" is the weak mixing