gluon

Noun

gluon (plural gluons)

1. (particle) A massless gauge boson that binds quarks together to form baryons, mesons and other hadrons and is associated with the strong nuclear force.
   • Naive realism might ask today: Tell me what space is in itself, not in terms of other things. Tell me what a gluon is at bottom, or a neutrino, or a charge.1992 November, George Zebrowski, Marvin Mattelson, “The Enigma of Distance”, in Omni, volume 15, number 2, page 80
   • The so-called spin crisis has had important effects beyond simply confronting theorists with a particularly sharp challenge to their incomplete understanding of quantum chromodynamics, the underlying field theory of quarks and the gluons that mediate their strong interactions.1995 September, Robert Jaffe, “Where Does the Proton Really Get Its Spin?”, in Physics Today, volume 48, number 9, →DOI, page 24