Heavy Flavours

The book is a collection of review articles on the most outstanding topics in the physics of heavy flavours. The book written exclusively by theorists reviews in detail the theoretical structure of heavy flavour physics within the standard model and its confrontation with existing experimental data. The physics of the top quark and of the Higgs play an important role in this book. Beginning with radiative electroweak corrections and their impressive tests at LEP and Hadron Colliders, the book summarizes the present status of quark mixing, CP violation and rare decays. The dynamics of exclusive D and B meson decays, the tau-Lepton physics and the newly discovered heavy quark symmetries are discussed in detail. The impact of strong interactions on weak decays is clearly visible in many articles. An important part of the book constitutes the physics of heavy flavours at LEP, HERA and hadron colliders. Another important topic is the possible role of heavy flavours in the spontaneous symmetry breaking of gauge symmetries. Finally the most recent advances in lattice calculations of the properties of heavy flavours and the lattice studies of the dynamics of heavy flavours are presented.