Applications of Relativistic Bose and Fermi Gases

Abstract

In elementary particle physics one has the opinion nowadays that quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the fundamental theory of strong interactions (see Volume 7 of this series). All hadrons (strongly interacting particles like the neutron and the proton) consist of the elementary quarks in this theory. Besides an electrical charge (multiples of $\frac{1}{3}e$ ), quarks carry a so-called color charge (from the Greek chroma ( $\chi \rho \tilde \omega \mu \alpha$ ), meaning color). The color charges are the sources of the color field, just as the electrical charges are sources for the electric field. Quarks interact via the color field. The main difference between electric charge and color charge is that the latter is a vectorial quantity with three components, which are usually called red, green,and blue.