Chiral symmetry, a basic symmetry of the strong interaction and thus of QCD, plays a major role in low energy hadron physics. This workshop highlighted its importance for the understanding of hadron properties, hadron matter and recent precise lattice and experimental results. Besides, heavy quark physics was also addressed.

This proceedings volume collected papers presented at a recent symposium on Chiral Symmetry in Hadrons and Nuclei — the seventh in a series of international symposia — with an aim of providing a platform for discussions among the experts and an overview of the present status in the hadron and nuclear physics related to the chiral symmetry.The recent past years have seen a remarkable progress towards a unified description of nonperturbative strong interaction phenomena based on the fundamental theory of the strong interaction, Quantum ChromoDynamics, and Effective Field Theories. The topics discussed in these proceedings include: chiral and heavy-quark spin symmetry; chiral dynamics of few-body hadron systems; chiral symmetry and hadrons in a nuclear medium; chiral dynamics in nucleon-nucleon interaction and atomic nuclei; chiral symmetry in rotating nuclei; hadron structure and interactions; exotic hadrons, heavy flavor hadrons and nuclei; mesonic atoms and nuclei.

This book is devoted to phenomena that are of interest to both particle and nuclear physicists. The topics include nucleon structure (including spin structure), electron, neutrino, and hadron scattering from nucleons and nuclei, strange matter, the standard model, theory of nucleons and nuclei from both the QCD and nucleon-meson viewpoints, new experimental techniques, and new facilities.

One of the main goals of intermediate energy nuclear physics, which serves an important role as a bridge between nuclear and particle physics, is to construct the theory of strong interaction phenomena in terms of conventional degrees of freedom (nucleons, deltas and mesons) as well as of quark degrees of freedom.The main topics to be discussed at this conference are the interaction of pions and other mesons with nuclei at intermediate energies and the role of mesonic degrees of freedom in nuclear reactions, including photon, hadron and heavy ion induced reactions. Both theoretical and experimental results will be included.Over the past two decades, the Meson Factories, including LAMPF, TRIUMF, and PSI, have provided us with systematic experimental information on hadron-hadron and hadron-nucleus dynamics. Major accelerators of JINR are also suitable for studying problems in Intermediate Energy Nuclear Physics. At the present time, first experiments have been performed with the proton beams at the Moscow Meson Factory of INR. One of the purposes of this conference is to introduce the intermediate-energy physics community to the possibility of utilizing the facilities of JINR and INR during the next decade.

This book presents a recent survey of the advances in hadron physics. The main topics are nonperturbative high energy processes in QCD, deep inelastic scattering and perturbative QCD, RHIC and quark-gluon plasma physics and effective theories for low energy QCD.The book contains four series of lectures written in a pedagogical style and a number of short papers on the main subject. They will benefit researchers who want to be familiar with the frontiers of hadron physics and its connection with the large experimental programs under development in laboratories such as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Thomas Jefferson National Laboratory.

This volume deals with both the experimental and theoretical aspects of meson physics; in particular, it presents new results. The main topics are: hadronic and electromagnetic meson production in various reactions; meson interaction with mesons, nucleons and nuclei; the structure of hadrons; mesons and fundamental symmetries; exotic systems. The book provides an overview of the current status of these areas, as well as of new developments, besides giving a preview of the forthcoming investigations.

This international conference was dedicated to the interface between nuclear and elementary particle physics. It was the thirteenth in a series initiated by T.E.O. Ericson, A. de Shalit and V. F. Weisskopf at CERN in 1963. The series provides the principal international forum for the presentation and critical examination of the main results of the experimental and theoretical research in the field of interest common to nuclear and particle physics. The topics cover the energy region where nucleons must be treated as composite particles, but quarks and gluons cannot be considered asymptotically free.PAN XIII reviews the status of the field in a delicate stage of transition: new experiments and instrumental facilities are bringing in more detailed and more accurate data on the various facets of the nuclear and subnuclear universe, but we are still far from a satisfactory and complete description of nucleons and nuclei in terms of underlying quarks and their interactions.

This volume collects papers presented at the international workshop “Hadron-Nuclear Physics 09” held at Osaka, November 16-19, 2009. The series of this workshop has provided opportunities to discuss common interests of hadron and nuclear physics.Hadrons and nuclei show up different layers of phenomena governed by the same dynamics dictated by the fundamental law of the strong interaction, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). The basic building blocks of matter, quarks and gluons, are confined in hadrons, generating their masses dynamically and breaking chiral symmetry spontaneously. The latter is the origin of the presence of the pion which governs the essential part of the nuclear interaction. Therefore, the common key words are chiral symmetry and pions.This volume contains reports of current achievements in hadron physics including exotic multiquark states, meson production reactions and non-linear dynamics of hadrons, and those in nuclear physics clustering phenomena, exotic neutron rich nuclei and the pions in nuclei. As related subjects, applications to astronuclear physics, including accelerator physics and laser physics are also discussed comprehensively.