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
Gauge theory are included in the Lagrangian to ensure its invariance under the local group transformations (called "gauge invariance"). When such a theory is quantized, the quanta of the gauge fields are called "gauge bosons". If the symmetry group is non-commutative, then the gauge theory is referred to as non-abelian gauge theory, the usual example being the Yang–Mills theory. Many powerful theories in physics are described by Lagrangians that are invariant under some symmetry transformation groups. When they are invariant under a transformation identically performed at "every" point in the spacetime in which the physical processes occur, they are said to have