Perspectives In Hadronic Physics

This volume contains the invited and contributed papers presented at the Fourth International Conference on Perspectives in Hadronic Physics and sent to the Editors within the deadline. The Conference was held at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy, from May 12th to 16th, 2003, and was attended by about 100 scientists from 20 countries. The series ofConferences on Perspectives on Hadronic Physics takes place every two years since 1997 and follows the seven Workshops on Perspectives in Nuclear Physics at Intermediate Energies, organized every two years at ICTP since 1983. The aim of these Conferences is to discuss the status-of-the-art concerning the experimental and theoretical investigations of hadronic systems, from nucleons to nuclei and dense nuclear matter, in terms of the relevant underlying degrees of freedom. For such a reason the Fourth Conference has been focused on those experimental and theoretical topics which have been in the last few years the object of intensive investigations, viz. the various approaches employed to describe the structure of hadrons in terms of QCD and QCD inspired models, the recent developments in the treatment of the properties and propagations of hadronic states in the medium, the relevant progress done in the solution of the few- and many- hadron problems, the recent results in the experimental investigation of dense hadronic matter and, last but not least, the physics programs of existing Laboratories and the suggested projects for new Facilities.

This volume discusses theoretical and experimental activities in the investigation of nucleon and nuclear structure by electromagnetic and hadronic probes at intermediate and high energies. The focus is on laboratory activities, recent progress concerning the structure of hadrons, relativistic many-body approaches, deep inelastic scattering and correlations in nuclei.

The aim of the Conference was to discuss recent results and perspectives on the theoretical and experimental investigation of the structure of free hadrons and hadrons in the nuclear medium, as well as the structure of hadronic matter both at normal and extreme conditions. The Volume is a useful update of the subject for theorists and experimentalists working in medium and high energy nuclear physics.