This book contains articles on the latest research in QCD from some of the leading experts in the field. These are based on talks presented at the Continuous Advances in QCD 2004 workshop held at the William I Fine Theoretical Physics Institute.The book will be a useful reference source for graduate students and researchers in high energy physics.The proceedings have been selected for coverage in: ? Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings? (ISTP? / ISI Proceedings)? Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)? CC Proceedings ? Engineering & Physical Sciences

This book is an introduction to the role of topology in the quantization of classical systems. It is also an introduction to topological solitons with special emphasis on Skyrmions. As regards the first aspect, several issues of current interest are dealt with at a reasonably elementary level. Examples are principal fibre bundles and their role in quantum physics, the possibility of spinorial quantum states in a Lagrangian theory based on tensorial variables, and multiply connected configuration spaces and associated quantum phenomena like the QCD q angle and exotic statistics. The ideas are also illustrated by simple examples such as the spinning particle, the charge-monopole system and strings in 3+1 dimensions. The application of these ideas to quantum gravity is another subject treated at an introductory level. An attempt has been made in this book to introduce the reader to the significance of topology for many distinct physical systems such as spinning particles, the charge- monopole system, strings, Skyrmions, QCD and gravity. The book is an outgrowth of lectures given by the authors at various institutions and conferences.

The revival of the Skyrme model for baryons has led to a large variety of investigations ranging from the foundations of effective meson theories and chiral soliton models, over numerous extensions of Skyrme's original concept, to many impressive results in applications to the meson-baryon system. Each author has made essential contributions to the field of his expertise, and the lectures collected in this proceedings review and asses the present status of these achievements and serve as guiding lines for future developments.

This textbook covers the main topics in contemporary condensed matter physics in a modern and unified way, using quantum field theory in the functional-integral approach. The book highlights symmetry aspects in acknowledging that much of the collective behaviors of condensed matter systems at low temperatures emerge above a nontrivial ground state, which spontaneously breaks the symmetry.The emphasis is on effective field theories which provide an efficient and powerful description that is valid at long wavelengths and low frequencies. In conjunction with the emphasis on effective theories, a modern approach towards renormalization is taken, whereby a wavenumber cut-off is introduced to set a scale beyond which the microscopic model under consideration ceases to be valid. The unique and innovative character of this presentation, free of historical constraints, allows for a compact and self-contained treatment of the main topics in contemporary condensed matter physics.

This book contains important papers on the strangeness production processes and strangeness nuclear physics resulting from electromagnetic interaction. Both experimentalists and theorists in the field present information on recent activities and discuss the prospects of related fields.

The structure of light hadrons is dominated by the spontaneously broken chiral symmetry of the strongly interacting (QCD) vacuum. Low energy properties of light hadrons can be described in terms of quarks interacting with chiral fields. This book gives a comprehensive account of a large class of models which describe the restoration of chiral symmetry at high temperature and density, the effective interactions between quarks, mesons as solutions of the Beth-Salpeter equation, and baryons in terms of solitions which rotate in flavor space. An in-depth analysis of regularization is given, including regularization by delocalized fields. Symmetry conserving approximations are formulated using both path integral and Feynmann graph methods. The book's style is pedagogical and well-suited to graduate and Ph.D. students who want to learn the techniques used in present day research. It can also serve as a reference for research and lecture courses.

This volume collects papers presented at the international workshop "Hadron-Nuclear Physics 09" held at Osaka, November 1619, 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.

This volume contains the lectures presented at the Workshop on QCD Vacuum Structure and Its Applications, held in Paris, France, in June 1992. The structure of the vacuum state of quantum chromodynamics is one of the major unsolved problems in strong interaction physics. Although considerable progress has been made in the last decade in understanding various aspects of QCD vacuum structure, a unified picture is still elusive. This volume covers recent advances in the major fields of relevance to the problem of the QCD vacuum, such as quark confinement, chiral symmetry breaking, nonperturbative approaches, and QCD vacuum phenomenology. It provides the first comprehensive presentation of this subject, and will be valuable tool for theorists interested in nonperturbative QCD, hadronic structure, and relativistic nuclear physics.

This book offers a new look at emergence in terms of a hierarchical emergent ontology. Emergence is recognised as a universal principle, as universal as the principle of evolution. This is achieved by setting out the ontological criteria of emergence and such criteria’s various roles. The traditional dichotomies are overcome, e.g., the synchronic and diachronic perspectives are unified, allowing a single, universal principle of emergence to be applied across various fields of science. As exemplars of its practical utility in both explanation and prediction, this new approach is applied to three different scientific areas: cellular automata, quantum Hall effects, and the neural network of the mind. It proves that the resulting metaphysics of hierarchical emergent ontology plays a fundamental role in unifying science, an impossible task under classical reductionism.