Few-body resonances are in the frontiers of resonance studies. Very similar problems occur in atomic and molecular physics, nuclear physics and high-energy physics. This collection presents the state of the art of the studies of resonance states in these fields and demonstrates their common methodological aspects. Most of the contributions are theoretical, but quite a few are closely linked with experiments through the data they are dealing with.

The Asia-Pacific Conferences on Few-Body Problems in Physics tackle cover the various aspects of few-body systems in physics, with high caliber contributions from internationally renowned researchers. Readers will gain a clear picture of the latest developments in the field in both the theoretical and experimental sectors.The scope of these proceedings covers research in the following areas: three-body forces and few-nucleon dynamics, hadron structure and QCD; exotic hadrons and atoms; effective field theory in few-body physics; electromagnetic and weak processes in few-body systems; few-body dynamics in atoms, molecules, Bose-Einstein condensates and quantum dots; few-body approaches to unstable nuclei, nuclear astrophysics and nuclear clustering aspects; and hypernuclear physics.

The first Asia-Pacific Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics took place from August 23 to August 28, 1999, at the Noda campus of the Sci ence University of Tokyo in Noda-city and Sawayaka Chiba Kenmin Plaza in Kashiwa-city, a suburb of Tokyo close to the Narita-Tokyo International Air port, with the Frontier Research Center for Computation Sciences (FRCCS) of the Science University of Tokyo as the host institute. The High Energy Accel erator Research Organization (KEK), the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), the Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP)-Osaka University, the Physical Society of Japan, and the Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies (AAPPS) supported this conference. The conference was initiated in the Asia Pacific area as a counterpart to the successful European Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics (APFB99), in addition to the International Few-Body Conference Series and the Few Body Gordon Conference series in North America. The Physics of Few-Body Problems covers, as is well known, systems with finite numbers of particles in contrast to many-body systems with very large numbers of particles. Therefore, it covers such wide fields as mesoscopic, atom-molecular, exotic atom, nucleon, hyperon, and quark-gluon physics, plus their applications.

th Coinciding with the 300 anniversary of the publication of Newton's Principia The International Astronomical Union organized the colloquium No. 96 "The Few Body Problem" in Turku, Finland, June 14.-19.1987. It provided an opportunity to review the progress in the very field which caused Newton a headache, as Victor Szebehely reminded the audience in his introductory remarks. It is a measure of the difficulty and complication of the few body problem that even after 300 years so many aspects of the problem are still unsolved. To quote Szebehely again, "Sir Isaac established the rules, Poincare presented the challenges". Many of these challenges are reviewed in the present proceedings. The gravitational few body problem cuts across the borders of established disciplines. The participants of the colloquium came from departments as different as Aerospace Engineering, Astronomy, Theoretical Physics, Physics, Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Planetology, Geodesy, Celestial Mechanics and Space Science. The few body problem is a problem of practical significance in many fields and the main aim of the colloquium was to bring together people with research interests in this area, many of whom normally attend different conferences.

Few-body physics covers a rich and wide variety of phenomena, ranging from the very lowest energy scales of atomic and molecular physics to high-energy particle physics. The papers contained in the present volume provide an apercu of recent progress in the field from both the theoretical and experimental perspectives and are based on work presented at the “22nd International Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics”. This book is geared towards academics and graduate students involved in the study of systems which present few-body characteristics and those interested in the related mathematical and computational techniques.

All papers have been peer-reviewed. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together and promote cooperation between theoretical physicists and mathematicians. Half of the talks were presented by mathematicians, the other half by physicists with the unifying theme being the field of Quantum few-body systems. The field is conceptually understood as applications of rigorous ab-initio methods to quantum systems consisting of a relatively small number of well-defined constituents and is of interest for both mathematicians and physicists.