stylistic:style_transfer
Counting gluons

There are eight independent types of gluons in QCD. This is unlike the photon of QED or the three W and Z bosons of the weak interaction.

Additionally, gluons are subject to the color charge phenomena. Quarks carry three types of color charge; antiquarks carry three types of anticolor. Gluons carry both color and anticolor. This gives nine possible combinations of color and anticolor in gluons. The following is a list of those combinations (and their schematic names):

These possible combinations are only effective states, not the actual observed color states of gluons. To understand how they are combined, it is necessary to consider the mathematics of color charge in more detail.