Antonio Masiero - Böcker

This volume is a collection of papers presented at the Summer School, ICTP, 14 June - 30 July. Topics covered include: comparing the elementary quark versus the preonic approach to unification, quark matter and nuclear collisions and effective actions and topological string amplitudes.

The proceedings of the Annual Trieste Summer School on High Energy Physics and Cosmology covers many of the leading research areas in these fields. They are valuable resources for active researchers, including advanced graduate students as well as postdoctoral fellows.

In this volume recent developments in the nonperturbative aspects of string theory, duality in N = 1 string compactifications, orientifolds and F-theory as well as the matrix model description of M-theory are reported. The D-brane approach to black holes and their entropy is also discussed.The phenomenological part is devoted to the main fields of present-day astroparticle physics: supersymmetry, neutrino physics and cosmology. The two most important aspects of supersymmetry are covered: Searches for superpartners (G Kane) and mechanisms of supersymmetry breaking (G Dvali).Results from recent neutrino experiments and their implications are presented (S Pakvasa). The central issues of modern cosmology such as inflation (R Brandenberger), formation of topological defects (T Vachaspati) and dark matter (M Kamionkowski) are discussed.

This volume presents introductory lectures on the Standard Model and Higgs physics, as well as QCD. These lectures provided the particle physics background for the main topics of the school: astroparticle physics and modern cosmology.

This volume provides timely coverage of nonaccelerator astroparticle physics. It complements two volumes prepared for earlier schools. Informative and pedagogical, it can serve as the basis for a modern course on the subject.The first section discusses the fundamentals of particle physics, with reviews of the standard model and beyond. The section on neutrinos and neutrino oscillations covers topics including neutrino oscillations, short and long baseline neutrino beams from accelerators, atmospheric and solar neutrinos, neutrinos from gravitational stellar collapses and neutrino telescopes. Another section deals with dark matter searches. Cosmic rays and astrophysics are covered with reviews of experiments in space, extreme energy cosmic rays, and gamma ray bursts. Gravitational waves and gravitational wave detectors are discussed. The final section deals with results from accelerators and future plans for accelerator facilities, computing, and new large and small detectors. Abstracts of the posters presented by participants at the school give a broad picture of world-wide activities in the field.

This book covers the present status of art of grand unification with and without supersymmetry (gravity), including cosmological consequences. It is addressed to graduate students and researchers interested in this fastly developing field. But without necessarily any previous experience, however, at least some parts of the book and, in particular, those concerning the most recent developments, are of interest to actively involved researchers in the field.