Värvuslaeng

Värvuslaeng, often translated as "color charge," is a quantum mechanical property of quarks and gluons in the Standard Model of particle physics. It is analogous to electric charge in electromagnetism but is more complex due to the nature of the strong nuclear force. There are three types of color charge: red, green, and blue. These are not literal colors but rather labels for distinct states. Gluons, the force carriers of the strong force, also carry color charge, and in fact, they carry a combination of color and anti-color.

The theory describing the interactions of color charge is called quantum chromodynamics (QCD). A fundamental principle of QCD is that all observable particles, such as protons and neutrons, must be "colorless" or "white." This means that the net color charge of any composite particle must be zero. This confinement of color charge is why we never observe free quarks or gluons.

There are two ways for a system of quarks to be colorlessly combined. One is for a baryon, like a proton, to consist of three quarks, each with a different color charge (red, green, and blue). The other is for a meson to consist of a quark and an antiquark, where the antiquark carries an anti-color charge that cancels the color charge of the quark. The interactions between these color-charged particles are mediated by gluons, which constantly exchange color charge, leading to the strong binding force that holds atomic nuclei together.