Until recently, the field of atomic and molecular collisions was left to a handful of practitioners who essentially explored it as a branch of atomic physics and gathered their experimental re sults mainly from spectroscopy measurements in bulk. But in the past ten years or so, all of this has dramatically changed, and we are now witnessing the rapid growth of a large body of research that encompasses the simplest atoms as well as the largest mole cules, that looks at a wide variety of phenomena well outside purely spectroscopic observation, and that finds applications in an unexpectedly...

One of the goals of mathematical physics is to provide a rigorous derivation of the properties of macroscopic matter starting from Schrodinger's equation. Although at the present time this objective is far from being realized, there has been striking recent progress, and the fourth "Ettore Majorana" International School of Mathematical Physics held at Erice, 1-15 June 1980 with the title Rigorous Atomic and Mqlecular Physics focussed on some of the recent advances. The first of these is the geometric method in the theory of scattering. Quantum mechanical scattering theory is an old and highly...

From July 20 till 31, 1981, the Advanced Study Institute on "Electron Correlations in Solids, Molecules and Atoms," sponsored by NATO, was held at the University of Antwerpen (U.I.A.), in the Conference Center Corsendonk. In the last few years, the problem of many-electron correlations has gained renewed attention, due to recent experimental and theoretic al developments. From the theoretical point of view, more sophisticated treatments of the homogeneous electron gas model evolved, including dynamical aspects of the electron correlation in the dielectric response. Furthermore, the...

The 1981Cargese Summer Institute on Fundamental Interactions was organized by the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris (M. LEVY and J.-L. BASDEVANT), CERN (M. JACOB), the Universite Catholique de Louvain (D. SPEISER and J. WEYERS), and the Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven (R. GASTMANS), which, like in 1975, 1977 and 1979, had joined their efforts and worked in common. It was the 22nd Summer Institute held at Cargese and the 6th one organized by the two institutes of theoretical physics at Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve. This time, while the last school was dominated by the impres sive...

The NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) on "Relativistic Effects in Atoms, Molecules and Solids" cosponsored by Simon Fraser University (SFU) and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) was held at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Van couver, Canada from August 10th until August 21st, 1981. A total of 77 lecturers and students with diverse backgrounds in Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and various interdisciplinary subjects attended the ASI. In the proposal submitted to NATO for financial support for this ASI, it was suggested that recent impressive...

This volume contains the Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute "Quantum Optics and Experimental General Relativity" which was held in Bad Windsheim, Federal Republic of Germany, from August 16 to 29, 1981. At first glance, one might wonder why a meeting should cover these two topics, and a good bit of quantum measurement theory as well, all of which seem to be completely unrelated. The key to what one may call this grand unification lies in the effort, underway in a number of laboratories around the world, to detect gravitational radiation. Present research is pursuing the...

The last decade has seen dramatic progress in the development of devices for producing mu1ticharged ions. Indeed it is now pos- sible to produce any charge state of any ion right up through 92 fully-stripped uranium (U +). Equally dramatic progress has been achieved in the energy range of the available ions. As an example, fully-stripped neon ions have been produced in useable quantities with kinetic energies ranging from a few ev to more than 20 Gev. Interest in the atomic physics of multicharged ions has grown apace. In the fusion program, the spectra of these ions is an im- portant...

The second Advanced Study Institute (ASI) on Techniques and Concepts of High Energy Physics was held at the Roaring Brook Resort at Lake George, New York. As in the case of the first ASI, our aim was to bring together a small group of promising young ex perimenters and several outstanding senior scholars in high energy physics in order to learn about the latest trends in the field and develop stronger contacts among scientists from different countries and different backgrounds. The setting at Roaring Brook was particularly congenial and the staff, under the direction of George Green, was both...

The Brentwood Summer Institute on Nuclear and Particle Physics at Intermediate Energies was the second of its kind organised by the TRIUMF group of Universities, the first taking place at Banff in 1970. With the advent of initial beams at the new meson facilities at LAMPF, SIN, NEVIS, CERN S.C. and TRIUMF it was an eminently suitable time for an in-depth study of some of the science which will be possible when these accelerators achieve their design intensities in proton and meson beams. The organizing committee, comprising: Univ. of Alberta G.A. Beer Univ. of Victoria J.M. Cameron J.M....