A.S. Wightman - Böcker

One of the goals of mathematical physics is to provide a rigorous derivation of the properties of macroscopic matter starting from Schrodinger's equation. Although at the present time this objective is far from being realized, there has been striking recent progress, and the fourth "Ettore Majorana" International School of Mathematical Physics held at Erice, 1-15 June 1980 with the title Rigorous Atomic and Mqlecular Physics focussed on some of the recent advances. The first of these is the geometric method in the theory of scattering. Quantum mechanical scattering theory is an old and highly cultivated subject, but, until recently, many of its fundamental developments were technically very complicated and conceptually rather obscure. For example, one of the basic properties of a system of N particles moving under the influence of appropriately restricted short-range plus Coulomb forces is asymptotic completeness: the space of states is spanned by the bound states and scattering states. However, the proof of asymp­ totic. completeness for N bodies was achieved only with physically unsatisfactory restrictions on the nature of the interaction and even for N = 2 required an involved argument rather more subtle than the physical circumstances seemed to warrant. The reader will find in the present volume a very simple and physical proof of asymptotic completeness for N = 2 as well as an outline of the geometrical ideas which are currently being used to attack the problem for N > 2. (See the lectures of Enss.

The seventh Ettore Majorana International School of Mathematical Physics was :Jeld at the Centro della Cultura Scientifica Erice. Sicily, 1-15 July 1988. The present volume collects lecture notes on the session which was entitled Con8tructive Quantum Field Theory lI. The II refers to the fact that the first such school in 1973 was devoted ,0 the same subject. The school was a NATO Advanced Study Institute sponsored Jy the Italian Ministry of Scientific and Technological Research and the Regional 3icilian Government. At the time of the 1973 Erice School on Constructive Field Theory, the speakers :ould summarize a decade of effort on the solution of superrenormalizable models in two dimensional space-time leading to the verification of the axioms of relativistic :J. uantum field theory for these examples. The resulting lecture notes have proved ,0 be exceptionally useful and are still in print. In the decade and a half that have ~lapsed since that time, there has been much hard work with the ultimate objective of providing a rigorous mathematical foundation for the quantum field theories in four iimensional space-time that summarize a large fraction of our current understanding )f elementary particle physics: QCD and the electroweak theory. The lecture notes )f the 1988 school record the fact that, although this objective has not been reached, Important progress has been made. The ultraviolet stability of Yang-Mills theory In four dimensions has been treated and renormalizable (not superrenormalizable) models in two dimensional space-time, Gross-Neveu models, have been solved.

The sixth Ettore Majorana International School of Mathematical Physics was held at the Centro della Cultura Scientifica Erice, Sicily, 1-14 July 1985. The present volume collects lecture notes on the ses­ sion which was devoted to Fundamental Problems of Gauge Field Theory. The School was a NATO Advanced Study Institute sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Public Education, the Italian Ministry of Scientific and Technological Research and the Regional Sicilian Government. As a result of the experimental and theoretical developments of the last two decades, gauge field theory, in one form or another, now pro­ vides the standard language for the description of Nature; QCD and the standard model of the electroweak interactions illustrate this point. It is a basic task of mathematical physics to provide a solid foundation for these developments by putting the theory in a physically transparent and mathematically rigorous form. The lectures and seminars of the school concentrated on the many unsolved problems which arise here, and on the general ideas and methods which have been proposed for their solution. In particular, we mention the use of rigorous renormalization group methods to obtain control over the continuum limit of lattice gauge field theories, the explora­ tion of the extraordinary enigmatic connections between Kac-Moody­ Virasoro algebras and string theory, and the systematic use of the theory of local algebras and indefinite metric spaces to classify the charged C* states in gauge field theories.

The present volume collects lecture notes from the session of the International School of Mathematical Physics 'Ettore Majorana' on Renormalization Theory that took place in Erice (Sicily), August 17 to August 31, 1975. The School was a NATO Advanced Study Institute sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Public Education, the Italian Minis­ try of Scientific and Technological Research, and the Regional Sicilian Government. Renormalization theory has, by now, acquired forty years of history. The present volume assumes a general acquaintance with the elementary facts of the subject as they might appear in an introductory course in quantum field theory. For more recent significant developments it provides a systematic intro­ duction as well as a detailed discussion of the existing state of knowledge. In particular analytic and dimensional renorma­ lization, normal product technique, and the Bogoliubov-Shirkov­ Epstein-Glaser method are treated, with applications to physically important gauge theories. All the preceding deals with perturbative renormalization theory. In recent years there has been an interesting development of non-perturbative renormalization theory in models in space-times of two and three dimensions, with the use of the methods of constructive field theory. Despite the simplicity of these models, the results are of significance because they are exact and answer a number of questions of principle. There are parts of renormalization theory which are not well understood, for instance the renormalization theory of non-renormalizable interactions.