Boson Boson In quantum mechanics, a boson (, ) is a particle that follows Bose–Einstein statistics. Bosons make up one of the two classes of particles, the other being fermions. The name boson was coined by Paul Dirac to commemorate the contribution of Indian physicist and professor of physics at University of Calcutta and at University of Dhaka, Satyendra Nath Bose in developing, with Albert Einstein, Bose–Einstein statistics—which theorizes the characteristics of elementary particles. Examples of bosons include fundamental particles such as photons, gluons, and W and Z bosons (the four force-carrying gauge bosons of the Standard Model), the recently discovered
X and Y bosons X and Y bosons In particle physics, the X and Y bosons (sometimes collectively called "X bosons") are hypothetical elementary particles analogous to the W and Z bosons, but corresponding to a new type of force predicted by the Georgi–Glashow model, a grand unified theory. The X and Y bosons couple quarks to leptons, allowing violation of the conservation of baryon number, and thus permitting proton decay. An X boson would have the following decay modes: where the two decay products in each process have opposite chirality, is an up quark, is a down antiquark and is a positron. A