EPAC 96; Proceedings of the Fifth European Particle Accelerator Conference, Sitges (Barcelona), 10 to 14 June 1996, Three Volume Set, also available on a CD-ROM, provides a comprehensive overview of research, technology, and special applications in the field of accelerators. It serves as a source for novel ideas and familiarizes researchers with advanced concepts.

CP violation is one of the most subtle effects in the Standard Model of particle physics and may be the first clue to the physics that lies beyond. Charge conjugation, C, and parity, P, are symmetries of particle interactions. C corresponds to the operation of replacing a particle by its antiparticle, while P is the operation of mirror reflection. Before 1956, it was believed that these were also symmetries of the interactions of elementary particles. In 1956, C S Wu found evidence for P violation in the weak interaction. Theorists proposed that the combination of CP would be a symmetry of the weak interaction. In 1964, Christenson, Cronin, Fitch and Turlay found the first evidence for the violation of CP symmetry in the decays of kaons.Although Kobayashi and Maskawa then showed how the Standard Model can accommodate the observed CP violation, Wolfenstein pointed out that it is also possible that there is a new interaction in addition to the usual four, called the superweak interaction, which is responsible for the asymmetry. To test this idea, the observation of a different type of asymmetry, called direct CP violation, is required; in the kaon sector, very precise measurements of the ratio of kaon decay rates are necessary. In B decay modes where a second order weak process whimisically named “penguin” interferes with another suppressed, first order “tree” amplitude, it may also be possible to observe these direct CP-violating effects.B physics and CP violation is now one of the major growth areas in high energy physics. Nearly every major high energy physics laboratory now has a project underway to observe the large CP asymmetries expected in the B sector and to test the consistency of the Standard Model. The unitarity of the Kobayashi-Maskawa mixing matrix in the Standard Model implies the existence of three phases, called alpha, beta and gamma, which can be determined by the measurements of CP asymmetries in B decays. About 200 participants gathered in Hawaii in March 1997 to discuss the progress in the field, and this important book constitutes the proceedings of that conference.

The motivation to conceive and build accelerators comes from a most fundamental need of man — to understand and control the world around us. With beams and their associated accelerators, scientists and engineers can gain understanding of the nature of matter and modify matter, which is not possible by other means. The areas already influenced by the developments in accelerator technology are high energy and nuclear physics, atomic and molecular physics, condensed matter physics and the biological sciences. There are also a growing number of applications in medicine and industry.This book summarizes all the currently available knowledge on the rf technology driving the development of particle beams for science, medicine and industry. It is a unique collection of information on this technology.

Over the past several decades major advances in accelerators have resulted from breakthroughs in accelerator science and accelerator technology. After the introduction of a new accelerator physics concept or the implementation of a new technology, a leap in accelerator performance followed. A well-known representation of these advances is the Livingston chart, which shows an exponential growth of accelerator performance over the last seven or eight decades. One of the breakthrough accelerator technologies that support this exponential growth is superconducting technology. Recognizing this major technological advance, we dedicate Volume 5 of Reviews of Accelerator Science and Technology (RAST) to superconducting technology and its applications.Two major applications are superconducting magnets (SC magnets) and superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) cavities. SC magnets provide much higher magnetic field than their room-temperature counterparts, thus allowing accelerators to reach higher energies with comparable size as well as much reduced power consumption. SRF technology allows field energy storage for continuous wave applications and energy recovery, in addition to the advantage of tremendous power savings and better particle beam quality. In this volume, we describe both technologies and their applications. We also include discussion of the associated R&D in superconducting materials and the future prospects for these technologies.