Can we find a free gluon?

Question

I have read these questions:

Quark intrinsic angular momentum and the Proton Spin Crisis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluon

And it made me curious.

I understand that quarks can only be found in confinement, and that gluons create flux tubes, if we want to separate them. When we want to separate quarks, the energy needed will not decrease with distance, but will remain constant and after a while it will be enough to create new quarks.

But I did not find anything about gluons, can we find free gluons? Is that what a gluon ball is? Can we find those free?

Question:

Can we find free gluons (at normal energy levels)? Can we find free gluon balls?

It says right in the confinment section, gluons also carry volor charge and so must obey confinement just like quarks — Triatticus, Jun 22 '18 at 17:28
Yes but they create a gluon ball, and that might exist free? — Árpád Szendrei, Jun 22 '18 at 18:00
A glueball is a confined state that is also colorless, but made of strictly gluons and doesnt have valance quarks — Triatticus, Jun 22 '18 at 18:08

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 22 '18 at 18:37

Always start with the wiki:

In particle physics, a glueball (also gluonium, gluon-ball) is a hypothetical composite particle.1 It consists solely of gluon particles, without valence quarks. Such a state is possible because gluons carry color charge and experience the strong interaction between themselves. Glueballs are extremely difficult to identify in particle accelerators, because they mix with ordinary meson states.

Here is a talk on the subject :, for a proposed experiment to find glueballs.

Gluon jets have been measured, fitting the predictions of QCD models, but they are jets of particles, as gluons themselves are colored, as observed in the comments and cannot be free.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 05 '24 at 23:43

Free gluons may have formed in the early universe, most likely during the Planck Era. This is because during this time, in the first seconds, the temperature was so high that quarks and gluons could not merge, due to their high energy levels. It forms a state of matter called a Quark-Gluon Soup.

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered May 08 '20 at 16:23

The gluons can be free depending on whether it is a colored gluon or an uncolored gluon. For a colored gluon, it is impossible to separate it from a gluon ball, and you will just end up with more gluons or quarks. However if the gluon is a colorless gluon like a blue-antiblue gluon the gluon can be removed however it will be unstable and will decay to a pion with a quark with color blue and and a antiquark with color antiblue.

Can we find a free gluon?

3 Answers3