Gluons

The properties of gluons, fundamental constituents of hadrons, are hard to study since gluons do interact only strongly. It is possible though to extract information on gluons from hard scattering processes, where they take part directly in the interaction. A review of methods used to measure the gluonic structure function of hadrons is presented, including those which lead to information about the gluonic structure of short lived particles. 18 refs., 12 figs. (author)