Color Charge - Red, Green, and Blue

Red, Green, and Blue

In QCD, a quark's color can take one of three values or charges, red, green, and blue. An antiquark can take one of three anticolors, called antired, antigreen, and antiblue (represented as cyan, magenta and yellow, respectively). Gluons are mixtures of two colors, such as red and antigreen, which constitutes their color charge. QCD considers eight gluons of the possible nine color–anticolor combinations to be unique; see eight gluon colors for an explanation.

The following illustrates the coupling constants for color-charged particles:

• The quark colors (red, green, blue) combine to be colorless

• The quark anticolors (antired, antigreen, antiblue) also combine to be colorless

• A hadron with 3 quarks (red, green, blue) before a color change

• Blue quark emits a blue-antigreen gluon

• Green quark has absorbed the blue-antigreen gluon and is now blue; color remains conserved

• An animation of the interaction inside a neutron.

• The gluons are represented as circles with the color charge in the center and the anti-color charge on the outside.