Re: Question About Charged Particles.

[Jack Uretsky <jlu@HEP.ANL.GOV>]

        The word "charge" refers to the source of a field.  The field
is the intermediary of the action of one charge upon another.  If the
field is quantized then there are particles associated with the field,
photons in the case of QED, gauge bosons in the case of the weak
interactions, etc.  The color charge is the source of gluons, which are
themselves charged.
                                Regards,
                                        Jack
On Sat, 7 Apr 2001, Jim Green wrote:

> >         A question came up on another list concerning the possibility of a
> > charged particle having a zero rest mass. It would seem that this would be
> > impossible for several reasons, the most obvious being, that there is an
> > electromagnetic mass associated with a charged particle.  Also Gluons are
> > believed to have zero rest mass even though they carry a color charge, plus
> > neutrinos carry a weak charge and were once thought to be massless.
>
> Folks, I am confused - my common state here on this list:
>
> The question seems to be about a "charged particle" -- presumably this
> refers to an electrical charge.  No one yet has given a helpful answer, but
> the conversation instead has drifted to "color charge" and "weak charge".
>
> What on Earth have electrical charge and color charge and weak charge have
> to do with each other???  What give rise to comparisons between color and
> Coulomb -- other than at some point some odd fellow (or lady, I don't
> remember) used the English word "charge" for all three cases?  Isn't this
> discussion just complicated by physics cuteness?
>
>
>
> Jim Green
> mailto:JMGreen@sisna.com
> http://users.sisna.com/jmgreen

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