Elementary particle interact via photon exchange. However, gluons are themselves color-charged, resulting in an amplification of the strong force as color-charged particles are separated. Unlike the electromagnetic force, which diminishes as charged particles separate, color-charged particles feel increasing force. However, color-charged particles may combine to form color neutral composite particles called hadrons. A quark may pair up with an antiquark: the quark has a color and the antiquark has the corresponding anticolor. The color and anticolor cancel out, forming a color neutral meson. Alternatively, three quarks can exist together, one quark being "red", another "blue", another "green". These three colored quarks together
Quark meson. This is analogous to the additive color model in basic optics. Similarly, the combination of three quarks, each with different color charges, or three antiquarks, each with anticolor charges, will result in the same "white" color charge and the formation of a baryon or antibaryon. In modern particle physics, gauge symmetries – a kind of symmetry group – relate interactions between particles (see gauge theories). Color SU(3) (commonly abbreviated to SU(3)) is the gauge symmetry that relates the color charge in quarks and is the defining symmetry for quantum chromodynamics. Just as the laws of physics are independent of