Gluons are the force carriers of the strong nuclear force. They are responsible for the binding of quarks together to form hadrons such as protons and neutrons. Gluons are also responsible for the strong nuclear force between nucleons.
The discovery of gluons is credited to Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig who, independently, proposed the existence of these particles in the early 1960s. Gell-Mann referred to them as “aces”, while Zweig called them “gauge bosons”. The name “gluon” was coined by James Bjorken and Sidney Drell in 1964.
Gluons are spin-1 particles with zero electric charge. They interact with quarks via the strong interaction, which is mediated by gluon exchange. There are eight types of gluon, each with a different color charge. The color charges of the gluons are what give rise to the strong nuclear force between quarks.
Gluons can be emitted or absorbed by quarks, but they cannot be detected directly because they do not have an electric charge. However, their presence can be inferred from experimental data on hadron interactions. When two high-energy photons collide, they may produce a pair of gluons which then quickly convert into hadrons (a process known as hadronization). This process can be used to study the properties of gluONS experimentally