In the four years since the first Trieste Meeting on Spin and Polarization Dynamics in Nuclear and Particle Physics, considerable progress has been made both in the theoretical and experimental aspects of this field. The polarization phenomena have given rise to many more detailed and crucial tests which enhance our understanding of particle physics. New information can also be uncovered in the process of conducting the various tests. For this reason, considerable efforts have been put into the present and future accelerators to extend the experimental data to measure polarization asymmetries for both polarized targets and polarized scattered and produced particles. The 2nd Adriatico Research Conference held in January 1992 brought together both theorists and experimentalists who presented many new findings. These findings have been compiled into this compact volume to give a complete picture of the wide range of theoretical and experimental problems, difficulties, results, prospects and hopes which are at the core of particle physics studies today. It will be a useful guide for the present status of polarization phenomena and their fundamental implications.

The various phenomena caused by refraction and diffraction of polarized elementary particles in matter have opened up a new research area in the particle physics: nuclear optics of polarized particles. Effects similar to the well-known optical phenomena such as birefringence and Faraday effects, exist also in particle physics, though the particle wavelength is much less than the distance between atoms of matter. Current knowledge of the quasi-optical effects, which exist for all particles in any wavelength range (and energies from low to extremely high), will enable us to investigate different properties of interacting particles (nuclei) in a new aspect. This pioneering book will provide detailed accounts of quasi-optical phenomena in the particle polarization, and will interest physicists and professionals in experimental particle physics.

Understanding of protons and neutrons, or "nucleons"â€"the building blocks of atomic nucleiâ€"has advanced dramatically, both theoretically and experimentally, in the past half century. A central goal of modern nuclear physics is to understand the structure of the proton and neutron directly from the dynamics of their quarks and gluons governed by the theory of their interactions, quantum chromodynamics (QCD), and how nuclear interactions between protons and neutrons emerge from these dynamics. With deeper understanding of the quark-gluon structure of matter, scientists are poised to reach a deeper picture of these building blocks, and atomic nuclei themselves, as collective many-body systems with new emergent behavior. The development of a U.S. domestic electron-ion collider (EIC) facility has the potential to answer questions that are central to completing an understanding of atoms and integral to the agenda of nuclear physics today. This study assesses the merits and significance of the science that could be addressed by an EIC, and its importance to nuclear physics in particular and to the physical sciences in general. It evaluates the significance of the science that would be enabled by the construction of an EIC, its benefits to U.S. leadership in nuclear physics, and the benefits to other fields of science of a U.S.-based EIC.