This book is the result of a broad-based and in-depth study of high energy physics commissioned by the Executive Committee of the Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society. This year-long study was initiated in the early 1994, in the wake of the cancellation of the SSC, and is meant to complement the report of the Drell HEPAP subpanel, charged with providing a vision for the future of the field. The DPF study of high energy physics was organized on the basis of the working groups, each led by a number of co-conveners chosen among established leaders in the various subspecialties in the field. These conveners, in turn, organized their working groups by inviting other active workers in the discipline to participate and gathered further input from the community by holding a variety of specialized meetings and workshops. This book contains the final reports of the 11 working groups assembled for the study, along with an extended overview and executive summary by the editors.

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

This 2nd edition is an extensive update of "B Decays?. The revisions are necessary because of the extensive amount of new data and new theoretical ideas. This book reviews what is known about b-quark decays and also looks at what can be learned in the future.The importance of this research area is increasing, as evidenced by the approval of the luminosity upgrade for CESR and the asymmetric B factories at SLAC and KEK, and the possibility of experiments at hadron colliders.The key experimental observations made thus far, measurement of the lifetimes of the different B species, B0-B0 mixing, the discovery of ?Penguin? mediated decays, and the extraction of the CKM matrix elements Vub and Vcb from semileptonic decays, as well as more mundane results, are described in great detail by the experimentalists who have been closely involved with making the measurements. Theoretical progress in understanding b-quark decays using HQET and lattice gauge techniques are described by theorists who have developed and used these techniques.Synthesizing the experimental and theoretical information, several articles discuss the implications for the ?Standard Model? and how further tests can be done using measurements of CP violation in the B system.

The book constitutes a compact review of the applications of effective field theory methods in flavour physics, with emphasis on heavy quark physics. Some of the relevant applications are discussed to illustrate the method. It covers the full range of theoretical tools related to the application of the effective field theory idea: Starting from the weak interactions as an effective theory derived from the standard model, well-established methods such as heavy quark effective theory, the heavy quark mass expansion and chiral perturbation theory are addressed. Also more recent ideas such as QCD factorization and soft collinear effective theory are outlined. Finally the standard model itself is viewed as an effective theory, allowing a model-independent look at the results of the new physics. The book should be useful for the advanced graduate student as well as for scientists who are interested in the theoretical toolkit used in the context of flavour physics. It is not meant as a complete review of the subject, rather it should be useful as an introduction to the basic ideas.