Superconductors today constitute a major focus of activity in the development of high resolution detectors for many applications. This volume collects the papers of an international workshop on the basic theoretical and experimental issues involved in the interaction between particles and superconductors. It emphasizes the involved condensed matter aspects of non-equilibrium time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equations, metastable superconductivity, quasiparticle and phonon lifetimes, and quasiparticle trapping, as well as low-noise pulse electronics, detector fabrication and low background...

This book contains review talks on many current topics in high energy particle physics and astroparticle physics, such as the status of precision tests of the Standard Model, tau and B physics at LEP, precision tests of QCD at LEP, WW physics and searches at LEP-2, heavy quark physics at the Tevatron collider, QCD studies at HERA, very high energy gamma astronomy, physics prospects at the LHC, physics prospects at linear colliders, and others. It also contains short status reports on several approved or planned experiments, namely DIRAC, HERA-B, AMS and ANTARES.