Gauge Carriers: Photon, Gluon, and Weak-Boson Standing

This paper is the second entry in the Standard Model Carrier Exhaustion ARC. It applies the SM-1 master classifier to the gauge sector and asks what, if anything, carries primitive gauge-boson standing once field notation, gauge choice, measurement route, perturbative description, projection interface, and model label are separated from carrier role. The central claim is that photon, gluon, W-boson, and Z-boson standing is not primitive merely because these objects are represented by fields, particles, propagators, polarizations, pole masses, widths, detector signatures, jets, gauge choices, or effective-field-theory coefficients. Those descriptions remain valid within standard gauge theory, but their standing is licensed through a closed gauge-carrier network: gauge-order standing, standing-preserving transport, curvature and holonomy obstruction, charge-response standing, color-transport standing, weak-chiral response, anomaly-obstruction standing, and gauge-vacuum compatibility. Within the ARC, SM-2 is the first sector-closure paper. It receives the classifier discipline of SM-1 and returns a closed local gauge package for the later Standard Model synthesis. The paper argues that photon standing descends to charge-response and unbroken electromagnetic transport; gluon standing descends to non-Abelian color transport; and W/Z standing descends to weak-chiral, gauge-vacuum, and Higgs-bridge licensed response. Gauge-sector BSM and EFT claims remain admissible as extensions, projections, burdens, target updates, or genuine falsifiers, but they do not become same-scope primitive gauge carriers by label or notation alone. Position in the ARC SM-2 is the gauge-sector closure paper. Its job is narrower than SM-6 but more concrete than SM-1: SM-1: establishes the master primitive-carrier / derivative-skin classifier. SM-2: applies that classifier to gauge standing: photon, gluon, W, Z, gauge fields, gauge choices, gauge-sector EFT, and gauge BSM branches. SM-3: receives the color/gauge side for matter-carrier closure. SM-4: receives the gauge-coupling non-carrier boundary and expands charge/coupling/RG transport. SM-5: receives weak-chiral and gauge-transition material for flavor/mixing/generation analysis. SM-6: imports SM-2’s closed gauge-carrier package into the final Standard Model carrier-exhaustion theorem.