Fundamental interaction The gravitational force is attributed to the curvature of spacetime, described by Einstein's general theory of relativity. The other three are discrete quantum fields, and their interactions are mediated by elementary particles described by the Standard Model of particle physics. Within the Standard Model, the strong interaction is carried by a particle called the gluon, and is responsible for quarks binding together to form hadrons, such as protons and neutrons. As a residual effect, it creates the nuclear force that binds the latter particles to form atomic nuclei. The weak interaction is carried by particles called W and Z bosons,
Gauge theory Lagrangian. In the quantized version of the obtained classical field theory, the quanta of the gauge field "A"("x") are called gauge bosons. The interpretation of the interaction Lagrangian in quantum field theory is of scalar bosons interacting by the exchange of these gauge bosons. The picture of a classical gauge theory developed in the previous section is almost complete, except for the fact that to define the covariant derivatives "D", one needs to know the value of the gauge field formula_29 at all space-time points. Instead of manually specifying the values of this field, it can be given as the