The idea of neutrino oscillations was suggested in 1957 by B Pontecorvo, immediately after the discovery of parity violation in β-decay. It took more than 40 years and the efforts of many experimental teams before the first convincing evidence that neutrinos are massive and mixed particles came to light.A central figure in this enthusiastic endeavour to unravel neutrino properties is Samoil M Bilenky, from his early collaboration (in Dubna) with Pontecorvo to his most recent attempts at analyzing and reconciling, in a coherent theoretical framework, the results of many difficult experiments. These aim at the measurement of neutrino masses and oscillations: from the various solar neutrino experiments, via the LSND accelerator experiment, to the most suggestive atmospheric neutrino experiments.This book, which celebrates the seventieth birthday of Samoil M Bilenky, offers a fairly complete overview of theoretical issues and experimental facts about our present understanding of neutrino physics and its implications for astrophysical and cosmological problems. Indeed, some contributions are devoted to more general topics within and beyond the Standard Model, from lattice QCD to dark matter and supersymmetric models.

Some major developments of physics in the last three decades are addressed by highly qualified specialists in different specific fields. They include renormalization problems in QFT, vacuum energy fluctuations and the Casimir effect in different configurations, and a wealth of applications. A number of closely related issues are also considered. The cosmological applications of these theories play a crucial role and are at the very heart of the book; in particular, the possibility to explain in a unified way the whole history of the evolution of the Universe: from primordial inflation to the present day accelerated expansion. Further, a description of the mathematical background underlying many of the physical theories considered above is provided. This includes the uses of zeta functions in physics, as in the regularization problems in QFT already mentioned, specifically in curved space-time, and in Casimir problems as.