During a deeply inelastic collision with a proton, a relativistic electron (highlighted in blue) can emit a high-energy photon (purple here) that penetrates interior of the proton, where it ‘sees’ ...

By producing an exotic-hybrid meson, researchers aim to tease apart information about gluons — the carrier of the strong force, or the "glue," that binds a quark and anti-quark together within mesons ...

Particles of light emitted from collisions of deuterons with gold ions provide direct evidence that energetic jets get ‘stuck’ — a key signature of quark-gluon plasma. (Artist’s concept.) Credit: ...

This mixture was dominated by quarks – fundamental bits of matter – and by gluons, carriers of the strong force that normally “glue” quarks together into familiar protons and neutrons and other ...