Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop, Alushta, Crimea, Ukraine, from 31 August to 6 September 2002

"The purpose of this volume is to gather the latest experiment results from the H1, ZEUS and HERMES collaborations and to capture new trends in HERA phenomenology. The presentations are by experts for experts, but are suitable for a mixed readership of both theoreticians and experimentalists. H1 members also cover ZEUS results and vice versa. This is the place where discrepancies between experimental data and theoretical predictions are pointed out and ventilated and where projects to be launched in the future are identified."--BOOK JACKET.

These proceedings present the most up-to-date status of deep inelastic scattering (DIS) physics. Topics such as structure function measurements and phenomenology, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) studies in DIS and photoproduction, spin physics and diffractive interactions are reviewed in detail, with emphasis on those studies that push the test of QCD and the Standard Model to the limits of their present range of validity, towards both the very high and the very low four-momentum transfers in leptonproton scattering.

This workshop is the fourth of a series initiated in Durham (March 93), followed by Eilat (February 94) and Paris (April 95). The large interest and the great inflow of experimental data, coming mainly from HERA, are some of the reasons behind the decision to have this annual meeting, presently the most important one for this area of research. During the workshop, experimental results and theoretical aspects have been reported on subjects, which have been organised by working groups on: 1) hadron structure functions; 2) photoproduction and photon structure; 3) diffractive interactions; 4) hadronic final states; 5) spin effects in lepton nucleon scattering; 6) special session on theoretical advances. While the contributions to the working groups offer hot material for specialists, the reports by the conveners, as well as other contributions to the plenary sessions, offer to nonspecialists a complete overview of this research field.

The Lepton-Photon symposiums ? as represented by the contributions in this volume ? are among the most popular conferences in high energy physics since they give an in-depth snapshots of the status of the field as provided by leading experts.The volume covers the latest results on flavor factories, quantum chromodynamics (QCD), electroweak physics, dark matter searches, neutrino physics and cosmology, from a phenomenological point of view. It also offers a glimpse of the immediate future of the field through summaries on the status of the next generation of high energy accelerators and planned facilities for astroparticle physics.The review nature of the articles makes the volume particularly useful to students, as well as being of interest to established researches in high-energy physics and related fields.

The Lepton-Photon symposiums — as represented by the contributions in this volume — are among the most popular conferences in high energy physics since they give an in-depth snapshots of the status of the field as provided by leading experts.The volume covers the latest results on flavor factories, quantum chromodynamics (QCD), electroweak physics, dark matter searches, neutrino physics and cosmology, from a phenomenological point of view. It also offers a glimpse of the immediate future of the field through summaries on the status of the next generation of high energy accelerators and planned facilities for astroparticle physics.The review nature of the articles makes the volume particularly useful to students, as well as being of interest to established researches in high-energy physics and related fields.

The 28th conference from the Rochester series was the major high energy physics conference in 1996. Volume one contains short reports on new theoretical and experimental results. Volume two consists of the review talks presented in the plenary sessions.