International Seminar QUARKS'98 was the 10-th in the series of Seminars being held biennially by the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nuclear Physics Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Science of Georgia. Originated from Georgia, "Quarks" moved to "Golden Ring" of Russia in 1992. Small ancient town of Suzdal was chosen to be the place of the Seminar this year. Participants of the meeting had a possibility to learn not only about the latest scientific achievements of their colleagues but also about artistic discoveries of constructors of famous Russian monasteries.
Scientific program of these Seminars traditionally covers broad spectrum of topics in high energy physics, quantum field theory and cosmology. The main purpose of meetings of this type is to create favorable atmosphere for fruitful contacts between scientists working in different branches of modern fundamental physics.
In spite of domination of theoretical physics at the Seminar, presented were also results from leading experimental collaborations. In particular Roman Walczak (ZEUS) and V.Efremenko (H1) presented recent HERA results with improved statistics and E.Tournifier (ALEPH) reported about measurements of the strong coupling constant at CERN.
Much attention at the Seminar was paid to various extensions of the Standard Model. Mikhail Vysotsky (ITEP, Moscow/INFN, Ferrara) discussed the problem of proton decay in supersymmetric SU(5) GUT and suggested a possible way to solve it, Sergei Troitsky from INR, Moscow shortly reviewed current theoretical and experimental status of unified theories with gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking. Y.Okada from KEK, Tsukuba described rich flavour physics in supergravity models, while Dmitry Gorbunov (INR, Moscow) pointed out the possibility of flavour violation due to messenger-matter mixing in gauge mediated models and considered consequences of this mixing for electroweak breaking. Prospects of observing supersymmetry at future colliders were discussed by Nikolai Krasnikov (INR, Moscow).
Theoretical aspects of supersymmetric theories were also highlighted at the Seminar. A.Marshakov, A.Gorsky and A. Mironov from ITEP, Moscow and Lebedev Institute, Moscow, analyzed in their reports the correspondence between non-perturbative dynamics of SUSY models, brane configurations in M-theory and integrable systems. Andrei Smilga from ITEP has managed to describe the whole supersymmetric "domain wall zoo" in his talk. Generalizations of Veneziano-Yankielowicz effective lagrangian that include extra bound states were constructed by Giga Gabadadze from Rutgers U., Piscataway.
Scientific program of the Seminar called "Quarks" certainly could not avoid broad discussion of various aspects of conventional non-supersymmetric quantum chromodynamics. Alexander Penin from INR, Moscow reported the calculation of vacuum polarization function of heavy quark in next-next-to-leading order that resulted in the value of mass of b-quark, m=4.78 GeV. Another talk devoted to heavy quark physics was given by J.Kuhn from U. of Karlsruhe, who considered production of massive quarks in electron-positron annihilation. In addition to calculational successes, non-traditional approaches to QCD were presented as well. Valentin Zakharov (ITEP, Moscow/MPI, Munich) suggested condensation of monopoles appearing after abelian projection as a source of confining potential. Larry McLerran (U. of Minnesota) discussed a possibility to describe QCD at small x via classical gluon dynamics. Prospects to observe at HERA the events due to tunneling between different topological vacua and QCD instantons were considered by Andreas Ringwald from DESY.
A number of reports was devoted to astroparticle physics and cosmology. Talks on one of the most mysterious of observed particles - neutrino - were a significant fraction of them. Alexei Smirnov (INR, Moscow/ICTP, Trieste) reviewed different schemes of neutrino mixing and possibilities to distinguish between them by observing neutrino oscillations at different experimental facilities. A.Starobinsky (Landau Institute, Moscow) described modern cosmological bounds for the mass of neutrino. Valery Rubakov (INR, Moscow) constructed a baryogenesis scenario based on the assumption of three generations of massive sterile neutrino. More exotic objects besides neutrino were considered as well. Peter Tinyakov (INR, Moscow) described possible phenomenological manifestations of supersymmetric Q-balls - quasiclassical stable objects carrying huge baryon charge, that naturally appear in many supersymmetric theories. In particular, he argued that Q-ball could cause a wreck of a neutron star. Another exotic phenomenon, primordial hypermagnetic field, was discussed by Mikhail Shaposhnikov (INR, Moscow/CERN, Geneva) in connection with triangle anomaly.
It is impossible to cover all the talks presented at the Seminar in a short note, but we hope that we have succeeded in our main goal - to stimulate the reader to take part in the next 11-th International Seminar "Quarks-2000". Finally it is worth noting that besides the excursions around Suzdal and another ancient Russian town Vladimir, the participants had a possibility to enjoy the Concert of Sacred Music by Vladimir Theatre of Choral Singing and musics performed by Consort of Recorders "Flauti Dolci" from Moscow.
This Seminar was supported in part by Russian Foundation for Basic Research.