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.

There are four fundamental forces in nature: gravitational, electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces. The last two are sometimes referred to as nuclear forces. It is the main objective of high energy physics to explore these forces, and hopefully unify them into one fundamental theory. This goal has made high energy physics one of the most ambitious, attractive, challenging, and powerful areas of physics, and has attracted experts from other areas including pure and applied mathematics, and computer science. The MRST annual conference brings together senior and junor investigators and provides a friendly and stimulating atmosphere to discuss recent developments in high energy physics. A broad range of topics in high energy physics was covered in this conference, and therefore these proceedings will be very useful to both senior researchers as well as graduate students in high energy physics, nuclear physics, and computational physics, providing most recent ideas, techniques, and directions for future research in this field.

Particle accelerators are used today for an increasing range of scientific and technological applications. They are very powerful tools to investigate the origin and structure of matter, and to improve understanding of the interaction of radiation with materials, including transmutation of nuclides and beneficial effects or risks from radiation. They are used to identify properties of molecules that can be used in pharmacy, for medical diagnosis and therapy, or for biophysics studies.Particle accelerators must be operated in safe ways that protect operators, the population and the environment. New technological and research applications give rise to new aspects in radiation shielding. These workshop proceedings review the state of the art in radiation shielding of accelerator facilities and of irradiated targets. They also evaluate progress made and discuss the additional developments required to meet radiation protection needs.

New theories are explored and discussed on establishing relations between the fundamental theory of strong interactions, known as QCD, and experiment. Powerful theoretical models, known as effective theories, based on symmetries of QCD, have been developed to address the non-perturbative regime of QCD in an approximate, yet quantitatively controllable way. The present workshop focussed on the most recent developments in this area. New results on meson and baryon physics are discussed as well and new directions towards the possible experimental confirmation of nuclear/quark matter and quark-gluon plasma are indicated.

The fourth edition includes new developments, in particular a new section on the double beta decay including a discussion of the possibility of a neutrinoless decay and its implications for the standard model.

This comprehensive volume summarizes and structures the multitude of results obtained at the LHC in its first running period and draws the grand picture of today’s physics at a hadron collider. Topics covered are Standard Model measurements, Higgs and top-quark physics, flavour physics, heavy-ion physics, and searches for supersymmetry and other extensions of the Standard Model. Emphasis is placed on overview and presentation of the lessons learned. Chapters on detectors and the LHC machine and a thorough outlook into the future complement the book. The individual chapters are written by teams of expert authors working at the forefront of LHC research.

This book attempts to cover the fascinating field of physics of relativistic heavy ions, mainly from the experimentalist's point of view. After the introductory chapter on quantum chromodynamics, basic properties of atomic nuclei, sources of relativistic nuclei, and typical detector set-ups are described in three subsequent chapters. Experimental facts on collisions of relativistic heavy ions are systematically presented in 15 consecutive chapters, starting from the simplest features like cross sections, multiplicities, and spectra of secondary particles and going to more involved characteristics like correlations, various relatively rare processes, and newly discovered features: collective flow, high pT suppression and jet quenching. Some entirely new topics are included, such as the difference between neutron and proton radii in nuclei, heavy hypernuclei, and electromagnetic effects on secondary particle spectra.Phenomenological approaches and related simple models are discussed in parallel with the presentation of experimental data. Near the end of the book, recent ideas about the new state of matter created in collisions of ultrarelativistic nuclei are discussed. In the final chapter, some predictions are given for nuclear collisions in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), now in construction at the site of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva. Finally, the appendix gives us basic notions of relativistic kinematics, and lists the main international conferences related to this field. A concise reference book on physics of relativistic heavy ions, it shows the present status of this field.

This second open access volume of the handbook series deals with detectors, large experimental facilities and data handling, both for accelerator and non-accelerator based experiments. It also covers applications in medicine and life sciences. A joint CERN-Springer initiative, the "Particle Physics Reference Library" provides revised and updated contributions based on previously published material in the well-known Landolt-Boernstein series on particle physics, accelerators and detectors (volumes 21A, B1,B2,C), which took stock of the field approximately one decade ago. Central to this new initiative is publication under full open access

Proceedings of the International Conference on The Nucleus: New Physics for the New Millennium, held January 18-22, 1999, at the National Accelerator Centre, Faure, South Africa

The study of hadrons unites a variety of theoretical approaches, ranging from low-energy QCD dynamics, chiral perturbation theory, and meson and baryon phenomenology, to the effects of hot and dense nuclear matter. Fruitful crosslinks between these topics had become clear in the recent past. These proceedings form a coherent overview of the actual state of low-energy hadron physics.