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
Technicolor (physics) and leptons, giving them their observed masses. (In general, electroweak-eigenstate fermions are not mass eigenstates, so this process also induces the mixing matrices observed in charged-current weak interactions.) In technicolor, something else must generate the quark and lepton masses. The only natural possibility, one avoiding the introduction of elementary scalars, is to enlarge "G" to allow technifermions to couple to quarks and leptons. This coupling is induced by gauge bosons of the enlarged group. The picture, then, is that there is a large "extended technicolor" (ETC) gauge group "G" ⊃ "G" in which technifermions, quarks, and leptons live in the