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.

This volume is a collection of review articles on the most outstanding topics in heavy flavour physics. All the authors have made significant contributions to this field. The book reviews in detail the theoretical structure of heavy flavour physics and confronts the Standard Model and some of its extensions with existing experimental data.This new edition covers new trends and ideas and includes the latest experimental information. Compared to the previous edition interesting new activities are included and some of the key contributions are updated. Particular attention is paid to the discovery of the top quark and the determination of its mass.

This volume contains reviews and new theoretical and experimental results on the following topics: testing the standard model, electroweak symmetry breaking and Higgs boson physics, rare decays, CP violation, oscillations, physics of strong interactions, physics beyond the standard model.