Written by authors working at the forefront of research, this accessible treatment presents the current status of the field of collider-based particle physics at the highest energies available, as well as recent results and experimental techniques. It is clearly divided into three sections; The first covers the physics -- discussing the various aspects of the Standard Model as well as its extensions, explaining important experimental results and highlighting the expectations from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The second is dedicated to the involved technologies and detector concepts, and the third covers the important - but often neglected - topics of the organisation and financing of high-energy physics research. A useful resource for students and researchers from high-energy physics.

A detailed overview of the physics of high-energy colliders emphasising the role of QCD.

The lectures collected in this book present a comprehensive review of the current knowledge of heavy-quark physics, from the points of view of both theory and experiment. Heavy Flavour Physics has accomplished enormous progress during the last few years: the last heavy quark has been discovered and the quality of the collected data on the other relatively lighter quarks has dramatically improved. On the theory side, noticeable progress has been reported on new calculations of decay rates based on various techniques, such as QCD sum rules, heavy-quark mass expansion and lattice QCD. The theory of heavy quark production is constantly improving and awaiting new results. Nevertheless there are strong reasons to believe that the Standard Model of High Energy Physics is incomplete. It exhibits very peculiar patterns for which it offers no explanation. The basic constituents of matter are arranged into three seemingly identical generations or families of quarks and leptons, differing merely in their masses. The pattern in the fermion masses, why they are families and why there are three of them is not yet understood. Furthermore it is known that at least within the standard model there is an intimate connection between the replication of families and the gateway of CP violation, in addition, the latter phenomenon is a crucial ingredient in explaining why our universe is made up almost exclusively of matter rather than being more or less matter-antimatter symmetric. How and to what extent can Heavy Flavour Physics impact on these questions? Does it offer novel windows onto New Physics beyond the Standard Model in general and onto new symmetries, such as Supersymmetry in particular? These questions constitute the central theme of this book. The material treated in this publication may serve as reference for the segment of the high-energy community actively engaged in heavy-quark physics.

Analyzes the theoretical questions related to electron and photon interactions at high energies.