Gauge boson certain atoms. The Standard Model of particle physics recognizes four kinds of gauge bosons: photons, which carry the electromagnetic interaction; W and Z bosons, which carry the weak interaction; and gluons, which carry the strong interaction. Isolated gluons do not occur because they are color-charged and subject to color confinement. In a quantized gauge theory, gauge bosons are quanta of the gauge fields. Consequently, there are as many gauge bosons as there are generators of the gauge field. In quantum electrodynamics, the gauge group is "U"(1); in this simple case, there is only one gauge boson. In quantum chromodynamics, the
Chirality (physics) to begin with, and therefore the pions are not massless, but have small masses: they are pseudo-Goldstone bosons. For more "light" quark species, flavors in general, the corresponding chiral symmetries are "U(N)×U(N)", decomposing into and exhibiting a very analogous chiral symmetry breaking pattern. Most usually, = 3 is taken, the "u, d", and "s" quarks taken to be light (the Eightfold way (physics)), so then approximately massless for the symmetry to be meaningful to a lowest order, while the other three quarks are sufficiently heavy to barely have a residual chiral symmetry be visible for practical purposes. In theoretical physics,