Production of Quarks and Gluons

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In these pictures e- and e+ beams, perpendicular to the screen, met and annihilated. The resulting quarks and antiquarks combined to produce mesons (three quarks) and baryons (one quark and one anti-quark), whose tracks are shown.

On the left, three clusters, initiated by a quark, its antiquark, and a gluon, provide evidence for the existence of gluons. On the right, two back-to-back clusters of particles were initiated by a quark and its oppositely moving antiquark.