Keith A Olive - Böcker

The symposium and workshop “Continuous Advances in QCD / Arkadyfest” was the fifth in the series of meetings organized by the William I Fine Theoretical Physics Institute at the University of Minnesota. This meeting brought together leading researchers in high-energy physics to exchange the latest ideas in QCD and gauge theories at strong coupling at large. It honored the 60th birthday of Professor Arkady Vainshtein, and the papers included in this proceedings volume also look back on the history of the subjects in which Arkady played such a central role: applications of PCAC, penguins, invisible axions, QCD sum rules, exact beta functions, condensates in supersymmetry, powerful heavy quark expansions, and new anomalies in 2D SUSY theories. The current status of these subjects was summarized in several excellent presentations that also outlined a historical perspective. A number of papers from leading researchers in the field present new developments and ideas in modern areas of study, such as the cosmological constant problem in extra-dimension theories, supersymmetric monopoles, solitons and confinement, AdS/CFT correspondence, and high density QCD.

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.