This thesis discusses two key topics: strangeness and charge symmetry violation (CSV) in the nucleon. It also provides a pedagogical introduction to chiral effective field theory tailored to the high-precision era of lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Because the nucleon has zero net strangeness, strange observables give tremendous insight into the nature of the vacuum; they can only arise through quantum fluctuations in which strange–antistrange quark pairs are generated. As a result, the precise values of these quantities within QCD are important in physics arenas as diverse as precision tests of QCD, searches for physics beyond the Standard Model, and the interpretation of dark matter direct-detection experiments. Similarly, the precise knowledge of CSV observables has, with increasing experimental precision, become essential to the interpretation of many searches for physics beyond the Standard Model. In this thesis, the numerical lattice gauge theory approach to QCD is combined with the chiral perturbation theory formalism to determine strange and CSV quantities in a diverse range of observables including the octet baryon masses, sigma terms, electromagnetic form factors, and parton distribution functions. This thesis builds a comprehensive and coherent picture of the current status of understanding of strangeness and charge symmetry violation in the nucleon.

Dramatic progress has been made in all branches of physics since the National Research Council's 1986 decadal survey of the field. The Physics in a New Era series explores these advances and looks ahead to future goals. The series includes assessments of the major subfields and reports on several smaller subfields, and preparation has begun on an overview volume on the unity of physics, its relationships to other fields, and its contributions to national needs. Nuclear Physics is the latest volume of the series. The book describes current activity in understanding nuclear structure and symmetries, the behavior of matter at extreme densities, the role of nuclear physics in astrophysics and cosmology, and the instrumentation and facilities used by the field. It makes recommendations on the resources needed for experimental and theoretical advances in the coming decade.

This book shows the usefulness of the nucleus as a laboratory for learning about basic symmetries and fundamental interactions. It is aimed at advanced graduate students and beginning researchers, but should be useful to advanced researchers as well. Nuclear and particle physicists will find it particularly useful.

This book contains the proceedings of the third international workshop on From Parity Violation to Hadronic Structure and More. The many applications of parity violation are way beyond the scope of what Lee and Yang could have imagined fifty years after their proposal. For the physics topics discussed during this workshop, the application of parity violation has become a standard work horse allowing for the extraction of many physics topics in different experiments.

This first open access volume of the handbook series contains articles on the standard model of particle physics, both from the theoretical and experimental perspective. It also covers related topics, such as heavy-ion physics, neutrino physics and searches for new physics beyond the standard model. 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

Almost 50 years after the proposal of Lee and Young in 1956 to test the hypothesis of parity violation in weak interactions and the subsequent experimental verification of parity violation by C. S. Wu, parity violation has today become a useful property of weak interactions. This is due to the fact that the focus nowadays has changed: parity violation in weak interactions is no more a topic of investigation but is used as a tool in many different fields ranging from nuclear physics to the search for the hidden extra dimensions requested by string theory. For our first workshop which took place June 5-8, 2002, at the Institut fiir Ke- physik of the Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat Mainz, we concentrated on the in vestigation of the strangeness contribution in the nucleon. This book contains the refereed and selected papers of the second workshop "From Parity Violation to Hadron Structure and more (Part II)", which took place June 8-11, in the Labo- toire de Physique Subatomique et de Cosmologie, in Grenoble. These papers appear in EPJAdirect, the electronic-only part of EPJA, and they are accessible without restrictions. They will also appear in printed form and can be ordered through Springer. The excellent presentations show the dramatic and steady progress in the accuracy of measured parity violating asymmetries over the last few years.