GAUGE BOSON

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

Meaning:

A particle that mediates the interaction of two elementary particles

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Hypernyms ("gauge boson" is a kind of...):

boson (any particle that obeys Bose-Einstein statistics but not the Pauli exclusion principle; all nuclei with an even mass number are bosons)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "gauge boson"):

gluon (a gauge boson that mediates strong interaction among quarks)

graviton (a gauge boson that mediates the (extremely weak) gravitational interactions between particles)

intermediate vector boson (a gauge boson that mediates weak interactions between particles)

photon (a quantum of electromagnetic radiation; an elementary particle that is its own antiparticle)