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Gluon ?

  1. May 8, 2010 #1
    Do Gluon's have a magnetic dipole moment ?
    I hope this is the right place to post this.
  2. jcsd
  3. May 8, 2010 #2
    they do not carry electric charge so no...
  4. May 8, 2010 #3
    Neither does the neutron, but it still has a magnetic dipole moment.
  5. May 8, 2010 #4
    but the neutron consists of electrically charged quarks . . . .
  6. May 8, 2010 #5
    True. But quarks interact strongly in the nucleus and there are calculations that show that gluons affect the magnetic moment of a baryon.

    Furthermore, at low energy a single gluon cannot exist. Therefore, OP's question is somewhat meaningless. At higher energy, there might be objects composed entirely of gluons called glueballs. So far, they have not been observed with certainty. At even higher energies, the normal phase of QCD gives way to a quark - gluon plasma at extremely high temperatures and pressures. In it, there are no separate hadrons, but quarks and gluons become free particles. Needless to say, no one has ever experimentally study this state of matter, let alone measure its magnetic properties.
  7. May 9, 2010 #6
    gluons affect the magnetic moment of baryons since they affect the spatial distrubution of quarks which have electric charge
  8. May 9, 2010 #7
    Gluons have no charge, so to first approximation, anything made entirely of gluons (like a glueball) has no magnetic moment.

    However, surrounding everything, there are (virtual) particle-anti-particle pairs, some of which are charged. More energetic particles cause more pair production. High energy glueballs can therefore be considered to be made of more than just gluons, and they have a magnetic moment because of this.

    But this isn't a property of gluons, this is a general property of a quantum field. Everything has a slight magnetic moment due to pair production.
  9. May 9, 2010 #8
    Interesting thanks for your responses .