The beta-beam concept for the generation of electron neutrino beams was first proposed by Piero Zucchelli in 2002. The idea created quite a stir, challenging the idea that intense neutrino beams only could be produced from the decay of pions or muons in classical neutrino beams facilities or in future neutrino factories. The concept initially struggled to make an impact but the hard work by many machine physicists, phenomenologists and theoreticians over the last five years has won the beta-beam a well-earned position as one of the frontrunners for a possible future world laboratory for high intensity neutrino oscillation physics. This is the first complete monograph on the beta-beam concept. The book describes both technical aspects and experimental aspects of the beta-beam, providing i) students and scientists with an insight into the possibilities offered by beta-beams; ii) facility designers with a starting point for future studies; and iii) policy makers with a comprehensive picture of the limits and possibilities offered by a beta-beam./a

This book collects the Proceedings of the Workshop "Incontri di Fisica delle Alte Energie (IFAE) 2006, Pavia, 19-21 Aprile 2006". The workshop is the fifth edition of a series of workshops on fundamental research in particle physics, as carried on at the most important international laboratories, and possible fallouts in medical and technological applications. Researches in this field aim at identifying the most elementary constituents of matter.

This proceedings volume is devoted to a wide variety of items, both in theory and experiment, of particle physics such as tests of the Standard Model and beyond, physics at the future accelerators, neutrino and astroparticle physics, heavy quark physics, non-perturbative QCD, quantum gravity effects and cosmology. It is important that the papers in this volume reveal the present status and new developments in the above-mentioned items on the eve of a new era that starts with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

This proceedings volume is devoted to a wide variety of items, both in theory and experiment, of particle physics such as tests of the Standard Model and beyond, physics at the future accelerators, neutrino and astroparticle physics, heavy quark physics, non-perturbative QCD, quantum gravity effects and cosmology. It is important that the papers in this volume reveal the present status and new developments in the above-mentioned items on the eve of a new era that starts with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The workshop has reviewed progress towards the future generation of neutrino oscillation experiments. These experiments will use very intense conventional neutrino beams and novel beams derived from muons or radioactive nuclei. These new facilities will provide a broad research front including muon physics and neutrino scattering experiments. The main technical challenges involve construction of very intense proton beams, targeting, effective capture of produced particles, cooling and ultra-fast acceleration of the resulting muons.

The discoveries of neutral currents and of the W and Z bosons marked a watershed in the history of CERN. They established the validity of the electroweak theory and convinced the physicists of the importance of renormalizable non-Abelian gauge theories of the fundamental interactions. The articles collected in this book have been written by distinguished physicists who contributed in a crucial way to these developments. The book is a historical account of those discoveries and of the construction and the testing of the standard model. It also reports on the future of particle physics and provides an updated status report on the LHC and its detectors being currently built at CERN. The book addresses readers interested in particle physics including the educated public.

As particle accelerators strive forever increasing performance, high intensity particle beams become one of the critical demands requested across the board by a majority of accelerator users (proton, electron and ion) and for most applications. Much effort has been made by our community to pursue high intensity accelerator performance on a number of fronts. Recognizing its importance, we devote this volume to Accelerators for High Intensity Beams. High intensity accelerators have become a frontier and a network for innovation. They are responsible for many scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs that have changed our way of life, often taken for granted. A wide range of topics is covered in the fourteen articles in this volume.

Launched in 2004, "Nuclear Physics in Astrophysics" has established itself in a successful topical conference series addressing the forefront of research in the field. This volume contains the selected and refereed papers of the 2nd conference, held in Debrecen in 2005 and reprinted from "The European Physical Journal A - Hadrons and Nuclei".

For many years neutrino was considered a massless particle. The theory of a two-componentneutrino,whichplayedacrucialroleinthecreationofthetheoryof theweakinteraction,isbasedontheassumptionthattheneutrinomassisequalto zero. We now know that neutrinos have nonzero, small masses. In numerous exp- iments with solar, atmospheric, reactor and accelerator neutrinos a new p- nomenon, neutrino oscillations, was observed. Neutrino oscillations (periodic transitionsbetweendifferent?avorneutrinos? ,? ,? )arepossibleonlyifneutrino e ? ? mass-squareddifferencesaredifferentfromzeroandsmalland?avorneutrinosare “mixed”. The discovery of neutrino oscillations opened a new era in neutrino physics: an era of investigation of neutrino masses, mixing, magnetic moments and other neutrino properties. After the establishment of the Standard Model of the el- troweak interaction at the end of the seventies, the discovery of neutrino masses was the most important discovery in particle physics. Small neutrino masses cannot be explained by the standard Higgs mechanism of mass generation. For their explanation a new mechanism is needed. Thus, small neutrino masses is the ?rst signature in particle physics of a new beyond the Standard Model physics. It took many years of heroic efforts by many physicists to discover n- trino oscillations. After the ?rst period of investigation of neutrino oscillations, manychallengingproblemsremainedunsolved.Oneofthemostimportantisthe problem of the nature of neutrinos with de?nite masses. Are they Dirac n- trinos possessing a conserved lepton number which distinguish neutrinos and antineutrinos or Majorana neutrinos with identical neutrinos and antineutrinos? Many experiments of the next generation and new neutrino facilities are now under preparation and investigation. There is no doubt that exciting results are ahead.

The physics of neutrinos--uncharged elementary particles that are key to helping us better understand the nature of our universe--is one of the most exciting frontiers of modern science. This book provides a comprehensive overview of neutrino physics today and explores promising new avenues of inquiry that could lead to future breakthroughs. The Physics of Neutrinos begins with a concise history of the field and a tutorial on the fundamental properties of neutrinos, and goes on to discuss how the three neutrino types interchange identities as they propagate from their sources to detectors. The book shows how studies of neutrinos produced by such phenomena as cosmic rays in the atmosphere and nuclear reactions in the solar interior provide striking evidence that neutrinos have mass, and it traces our astounding progress in deciphering the baffling experimental findings involving neutrinos. The discovery of neutrino mass offers the first indication of a new kind of physics that goes beyond the Standard Model of elementary particles, and this book considers the unanticipated patterns in the masses and mixings of neutrinos in the framework of proposed new theoretical models. The Physics of Neutrinos maps out the ambitious future facilities and experiments that will advance our knowledge of neutrinos, and explains why the way forward in solving the outstanding questions in neutrino science will require the collective efforts of particle physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics, and cosmology.