The Ivth International Conference On Quarks And Nuclear Physics

The QNP series of international conferences on Quarks and Nuclear Physics is by now a well established and highly respected forum where the most recent developments in the field are discussed and communicated. QNP 2006 is the forth edition of this biennial meeting. Selected and refereed original contributions of QNP 2006 have been published in The European Physical Journal A - Hadrons and Nuclei (EPJ A), while the present proceedings book, in addition to reprinting the articles published in EPJ A, further includes all other contributions selected and accepted by the organizing committee for publication and archiving.

This volume contains the invited and contributed papers presented at the Fourth International Conference on Perspectives in Hadronic Physics and sent to the Editors within the deadline. The Conference was held at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy, from May 12th to 16th, 2003, and was attended by about 100 scientists from 20 countries. The series ofConferences on Perspectives on Hadronic Physics takes place every two years since 1997 and follows the seven Workshops on Perspectives in Nuclear Physics at Intermediate Energies, organized every two years at ICTP since 1983. The aim of these Conferences is to discuss the status-of-the-art concerning the experimental and theoretical investigations of hadronic systems, from nucleons to nuclei and dense nuclear matter, in terms of the relevant underlying degrees of freedom. For such a reason the Fourth Conference has been focused on those experimental and theoretical topics which have been in the last few years the object of intensive investigations, viz. the various approaches employed to describe the structure of hadrons in terms of QCD and QCD inspired models, the recent developments in the treatment of the properties and propagations of hadronic states in the medium, the relevant progress done in the solution of the few- and many- hadron problems, the recent results in the experimental investigation of dense hadronic matter and, last but not least, the physics programs of existing Laboratories and the suggested projects for new Facilities.

This volume contains the refereed and selected contributions from the International Conference on Quark Nuclear Physics (QNP2002), held from 9 to 14 June 2002 in Jülich, Germany.

This is the proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Particles and Nuclei, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA which was concerned with new developments in experimental and theoretical particle physics, nuclear physics, and cosmology, and the intersections of these fields which will help us understand our Universe more completely. The participants reported on new developments in instrumentation, including large-scale facilities, such as accelerators, that will be essential for future work.

Quantum chromodynamics is generally accepted to be the quantum field theory which describes the strong interactions in elementary particle physics. However, the question of the mechanism responsible for the “confinement” of the color degrees of freedom of quarks and gluons into hadrons still ranks as one of the most interesting open problems in physics. This proceedings volume summarizes the state of the art in this area of research. Mathematically inclined readers will find the articles based on monopoles, vortices, and topology most interesting. Meanwhile, lattice calculations can be performed for many important physical quantities. Their results can be used as guidelines for developing models of quark confinement. These models are indispensable for theoretical physicists performing calculations with the Bethe–Salpeter equation, Dyson–Schwinger equations, effective Hamiltonians, and potential models. The cross-fertilization of all these subfields of research becomes evident from the articles in this book. A few experimental papers are also included. Contents:Contemporary Applications of Dyson–Schwinger Equations (M B Hecht et al.)Strangeness Production Using Electrons (O K Baker)Glueballs, Hybrid and Exotic Mesons and String Breaking (C Michael)The Gluon Condensate from Gauge Invariant Vortex Vacuum Texture (K Langfeld)Quark Confinement in the Analytic Approach to QCD (A V Nesterenko)Confinement Picture in Dual Formulation of Lattice Gauge Models (O Borisenko & M Faber)Hamiltonian Lattice Gauge Theory (N E Ligterink)Electromagnetic Properties of Light Nucleon Resonances in a Chiral Constituent Quark Model (R F Wagenbrunn et al.)Relationship of Pionium Lifetime with Pion Scattering Lengths in Generalized Chiral Perturbation Theory (H Sazdjian)The Mass of the b Quark from Lattice NRQCD (S Collins)Weak Form Factors for Heavy Meson Decays (D Melikhov & B Stech)Instantaneous Bethe-Salpeter Equation: (Semi-) Analytical Solution (W Lucha et al.)QCD Sum Rules at Finite Temperature and Density (S Mallik)Mass of the Bottom Quark (W Lucha & F F Schöberl)and other papers Readership: Researchers, academics and graduate students in high energy physics. Keywords:

Summarizes the state of the art in this area of research.