Derived from a course given at the University of Maryland for advanced graduate students, this book deals with some of the latest developments in our attempts to construct a unified theory of the fundamental interactions of nature. Among the topics covered are spontaneous symmetry breaking, grand unified theories, supersymmetry, and supergravity. the book starts with a quick review of elementary particle theory and continues with a discussion of composite quarks, leptons, Higgs bosons, and CP violation; it concludes with consideration of supersymmetric unification schemes, in which bosons and leptons are considered in some sense equivalent. The third edition will be completely revised and brought up to date, particularly by including discussions of the many experimental developments in recent years.

This book offers a comprehensive discussion of developments at the interface of particle physics, supergravity, and cosmology, for graduates and researchers.

This OA text develops the basic concepts of supersymmetry for experimental and phenomenological particle physicists and graduate students.

The theoretical understanding of elementary particle interactions has under gone a revolutionary change during the past one and a half decades. The spontaneously broken gauge theories, which in the 1970s emerged as a prime candidate for the description of electro-weak (as weIl as strong) interactions, have been confirmed by the discovery of neutral weak currents as weIl as the w- and Z-bosons. We now have a field theory of electro-weak interactions at energy scales below 100 GeV-the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam theory. It is a renormalizable theory which enables us to do calculations without en countering unnecessary divergences. The burning question now is: Wh at lies ahead at the next level of unification? As we head into the era of supercolliders and ultrahigh energy machines to answer this question, many ap, pealing possi bilities exist: left-right symmetry, technicolor, compositeness, grand unifica ti on, supersymmetry, supergravity, Kaluza-Klein models, and most recently superstrings that even unify gravity along with other interactions. Experi ments will decide if any one or any combination of these is to be relevant in the description of physics at the higher energies. As an outcome of our con fidence in the possible scenerios for elementary particle physics, we have seen our understanding of the early uni verse improve significantly.

The articles in this book are written versions of talks presented at a conference organized by the TMR network in Corfu. The main theme of the conference was the interconnection between string theory and gauge theory. These very recent developments draw from many aspects of string theory, supergravity and supersymmetric gauge field theory. For students starting their research there is a great deal of background material that they have to absorb in order to be able to follow current developments. With this in mind the editors have included pedagogical lectures on background material and recent developments. Extensive lecture notes by Bernard de Witt, Renate Kallosh, Robbert Dijkgraaf, Michael Green, Eliezer Rabinovici and John Schwarz make these proceedings a valuable reference for a long time to come. The book addresses researchers as well as students.

This book describes the basic concepts of supersymmetric theories. It is aimed at theorists, experimentalists and cosmologists interested in supersymmetry, and its content is correspondingly divided into three distinct tracks of study. The topics covered include a discussion of the motivation for supersymmetry in fundamental physics, a description of the minimal supersymmetric model as well as models of grand unification and string models, a presentation of the main scenarios for supersymmetry breaking, including the concepts and results of dynamical breaking. On the astrophysics/cosmology side, the book includes discussions of supersymmetric dark matter candidates, inflation, dark energy, and the cosmological constant problem. Some very basic knowledge of quantum field theory is needed and extensive appendices (in particular an introduction to the Standard Model of fundamental interactions) allow the reader to refresh and complete their notions.

In August/September 2002, a group of 78 physicists from 50 laboratories in 17 countries met in Erice, Italy, to participate in the 40th Course of the International School of Subnuclear Physics. The purpose of the School was to focus attention on the theoretical and phenomenological developments in gauge theories, as well as in all the other sectors of subnuclear physics. Experimental highights from the most relevant sources of new data were presented and discussed, including the latest news on theoretical developments in quantizing the gravitational forces. This volume constitutes the proceedings of the School. It is dedicated to the memory of Victor Frederick Weisskopf, a founder OCo together with John Stewart Bell, Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett and Isidor Isaac Rabi OCo of the OC Ettore MajoranaOCO Centre for Scientific Culture, this School being the first of its 114 Schools now in existence. Contents: Mini-Courses on Basics: Physics of QCD Instantons (E V Shuryak); Confinement and Duality (M J Strassler); Status of Super String Theory (E Verlinde); Perturbative Quantum Gravity (G ''t Hooft); Experimental Highlights: Highlights from Gran Sasso Laboratory (A Bettini); Experimental Highlights from Super-Kamiokande (Y Totsuka); The Fermilab Experimental Physics Program (R Tschirhardt); Special Sessions for New Talents: Application of the Large- N c Limit to a Chiral Lagrangian with Resonances (O Cata); Towards the Finite Temperature Gluon Propagator in Landau Gauge YangOCoMills Theory (A Maas); Hermes Measurements of the Nucleon Spin Structure (J Wendland); and other papers. Readership: High energy, experimental and theoretical physicists."