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...

This comprehensive work thoroughly introduces and reviews the set ofresults from Belle and BaBar - aftermore than two decades of independent and complementarywork - all theway from the detectors and theanalysis tools used, up to the physicsresults, and the interpretationof these results.

The world s two giant B Factorycollaborations, Belle at KEK and BaBar at SLAC, have successfullycompleted theirmain mission to discover and quantify CP violation in the decays of B mesons. CP violation is a necessary requirement to distinguish unambiguously between matterand antimatter. The shared...