Already in 1997, the topics included in this meeting had been enlarged to include all different phases and phase transitions relevant on laboratory scales or in cosmology. The '98 meeting followed this trend, and there was a balanced combination of the physics associated with both strong and electroweak interactions (and beyond). The main motivation continues to be the understanding of the standard model in “extreme” situations, particularly relevant on the cosmological scale. Most contributions were in one way or another concerned with the finite-temperature aspects of strong and electroweak interactions, and, as in the previous meeting, one persistent theme was the present understanding of baryon-number asymmetry: how it can be created, and how it can be maintained beyond the earliest stages of the Universe. The recent progress in describing the real-time and nonequilibrium dynamics of the non-Abelian gauge was covered in a number of the main talks, as well as in several shorter contributions and posters. The conference presented examples of impressive analytical progress and equally impressive results from numerical simulations: the two techniques continue to fruitfully complement each other. One completely new theme at this conference was the recent suggestion that finite-density QCD may contain new and interesting condensed phases in the neighborhood of the conventional critical density separating quark matter from hadronic matter. All of these developments, and many more, are reflected in this book.

This book contains articles by experts on the plasma phase of quantum chromodynamics, and the plasma phase of electroweak interactions. The former plasma phase is being tested at RHIC (Brookhaven), and has been tested at CERN. Both plasmas have played roles in the development of the Universe since the Big Bang. A third topic is that of the high density colour superconductive state of matter, which may be present in the core of neutron stars. Contents: Color Superconductivity in Compact Stars (M Alford et al.); Aspects of Parity, CP and Time Reversal Violation in Hot QCD (D Kharzeev et al.); Electroweak Phase Transition Beyond the Standard Model (M Laine); Aspects of Semi-Classical Transport Theory for QCD (D Litim); Debye Screening in the QCD Plasma (O Philipsen); Isospin Matter (D Son & M Stephanov); The Electrical Conductivity in High Temperature QED (L Bettencourt & E Mottola); Phase Transition in QCD (H Satz); Time Dependent Effective Actions at Finite Temperature (T Evans); Nonequilibrium Dynamics in Gauge Theories (J Baacke & K Heitmann); Bubble Wall Velocity in the MSSM (P John & M Schmidt); Sphalerons with Two Higgs Doublets (M Hindmarsh & J Grant); and other papers. Readership: PhD students, researchers and academics in particle physics.

This volume covers the collective behaviour of the Standard Model at finite temperature and density. The main physics motivation for this research comes from the early history of the Universe and also from the experimental efforts to create the quark-gluon plasma in laboratory experiments. Advances in theoretical investigations (effective theories, progress in numerical simulations, etc.) as well as the phenomenological applications figure in the broad spectrum of invited lectures. Prospective studies of beyond-the-Standard-Model theories receive particular attention. Non-equilibrium phenomena, especially questions related to baryon generation due to the electroweak anomaly and inflationary dynamics, are also discussed.

High Energy Physics 99 contains the 18 invited plenary presentations and 250 contributions to parallel sessions presented at the International Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics. The book provides a comprehensive survey of the latest developments in high energy physics. Topics discussed include hard high energy, structure functions, soft interactions, heavy flavor, the standard model, hadron spectroscopy, neutrino masses, particle astrophysics, field theory, and detector development.

This volume presents an authoritative review of the physics of strongly and electroweakly interacting elementary particle matter in extreme conditions that prevailed in the very early Universe, and which are being recreated in high energy physics laboratories today. Exciting, high-quality experimental results from RHIC collider at Brookhaven, collected since summer 2000, suggest that strongly interacting quark-gluon plasma has indeed been produced. The study of these phenomena will form an important part of theoretical particle and nuclear physics for years to come.Based on the discussions of more than a hundred experts at the Strong and Electroweak Matter 2004 Meeting, this volume contains an up-to-date overview of present ideas on QCD matter: quark-gluon plasma in heavy ion collisions, phase structure, kinetics, thermalization and transport properties. Also discussed are topics related to the cosmology of the early Universe, dark matter, inflation and creation of particle-antiparticle asymmetries. Both analytic and numerical lattice Monte Carlo methods are emphasized.

The SEWM2002 workshop, like the ones before, brought together theoretical physicists working on thermal field theory and, more generally, on (resummation) techniques for deriving effective actions based on QCD and the electroweak standard model of elementary particle physics, but describing nonstandard situations. The focus was on the temperature/chemical potential phase diagram of QCD, considered both analytically and with lattice gauge theory, equilibrium and nonequilibrium thermo field theory, and on heavy ion physics. Other related topics were OC small x physicsOCO in QCD, electroweak baryogenesis, inflation, and dark energy in the early universe."

This volume presents a selection of current developments in quantum chromodynamics, with some emphasis on the borderline between the perturbative and the nonperturbative regime. The topics include: effective QCD, sum rules, vacuum structure, confinement, bound states, quark masses, lattice QCD, deconfinement, deep inelastic scattering and structure functions, strong coupling constant, radiative corrections.