This book presents more than 300 exercises, with guided solutions, on topics that span both the experimental and the theoretical aspects of particle physics. The exercises are organized by subject, covering kinematics, interactions of particles with matter, particle detectors, hadrons and resonances, electroweak interactions and flavor physics, statistics and data analysis, and accelerators and beam dynamics. Some 200 of the exercises, including 50 in multiple-choice format, derive from exams set by the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Research (INFN) over the past decade to select its scientific staff of experimental researchers. The remainder comprise problems taken from the undergraduate classes at ETH Zurich or inspired by classic textbooks. Whenever appropriate, in-depth information is provided on the source of the problem, and readers will also benefit from the inclusion of bibliographic details and short dissertations on particular topics. This book is an ideal complement to textbooks on experimental and theoretical particle physics and will enable students to evaluate their knowledge and preparedness for exams.

The conceptofspontaneous symmetry breaking plays a fundamental role in contemporary physics. It is essential for the description of degenerate ground states, massless modes, and topological defects. Examples are abundant in condensed matter physics, atomic and particle physics, as well as in astro physics and cosmology. In fact, spontaneous symmetry breaking can be re garded as a cornerstone ofa whole branch ofphysics which intersects the above mentioned traditionally distinct fields. In the year 2000 the European Science Foundation (ESF) started the Pro gramme "Cosmology in the Laboratory" (COSLAB), with the goal to search for and to develop analogies betweencondensed matterphysics, particle physics, and cosmology. Not surprisingly, spontaneous symmetry breaking is among the most useful notions in that endeavour. It has been decided that in the sec ond year of the Programme a School should be held in order to work out and deliver to a wide audience of students synthetic overviews of achievements and of current research topics of COSLAB. This idea has been supported by the Scientific and Environmental Affairs Division of NATO by including the School in the renowned series of its Advanced Study Institutes. The School, entitled" Patterns of Symmetry Breaking", was held in Cracow during 16-28 September 2002. It gathered 17 lecturers and about 60 students. The present volume contains notes ofmost of the lectures from that School. We hope that of the physics of spon it will convey to the reader the breadth and the beauty taneous symmetry breaking.

The handbook centers on detection techniques in the field of particle physics, medical imaging and related subjects. It is structured into three parts. The first one is dealing with basic ideas of particle detectors, followed by applications of these devices in high energy physics and other fields. In the last part the large field of medical imaging using similar detection techniques is described. The different chapters of the book are written by world experts in their field. Clear instructions on the detection techniques and principles in terms of relevant operation parameters for scientists and graduate students are given.Detailed tables and diagrams will make this a very useful handbook for the application of these techniques in many different fields like physics, medicine, biology and other areas of natural science.

This second open access volume of the handbook series deals with detectors, large experimental facilities and data handling, both for accelerator and non-accelerator based experiments. It also covers applications in medicine and life sciences. A joint CERN-Springer initiative, the "Particle Physics Reference Library" provides revised and updated contributions based on previously published material in the well-known Landolt-Boernstein series on particle physics, accelerators and detectors (volumes 21A, B1,B2,C), which took stock of the field approximately one decade ago. Central to this new initiative is publication under full open access