Preface

The 7th Adriatic Meeting on Particle Physics '94 represents a continuation of a series of international conferences organized regularly by particle physicists of the Rudjer Bo\v{s}kovi\'{c} Institute and the Physics Department of the University of Zagreb. The first of these Adriatic conferences took place in the city of Rovinj, in Istria, in the northern part of the Croatian coast, in 1973. The subsequent Adriatic meetings on particle physics were held in Dubrovnik, often contributing to the activity of the Interuniversity Centre located there.

Originally, the 7th Adriatic Meeting should have taken place in Dubrovnik, in the fall of 1991. However, it had to be postponed due to the "great"-Serbian aggression on Croatia, during which the beautiful ancient city of Dubrovnik was wantonly damaged. The war of liberation eventually led in 1993 to lifting of the siege of Dubrovnik, and the intensive efforts at restoring the city are successfully returning it its old splendour. So, some of future Adriatic meetings can doubtlessly again take place in Dubrovnik again.

The 7th Adriatic Meeting in 1994 was held on the Brijuni Islands, not far from its Rovinj origin, as the first international physics meeting in the independent state of Croatia. Following the tradition of previous Adriatic conferences, this one also took place in an area abundant in interesting historical monuments dating from Roman and Byzantine times, as well as in beauty spots. The Brijuni Archipelago has a long tradition as a luxurious, very secluded resort, which was only recently proclaimed a national park and became accessible to general public. Thus, besides lectures, the participants could enjoy the beauty of the Adriatic Sea and beautiful sights of the islands.

There was a great need for this conference. It was essential not to lose continuity of these international meetings. The particle physics community in Croatia is one of the most developed physics communities in our country, with very strong international ties, and we felt the need to restart its traditional international meetings as soon as possible. At the same time we felt that the meeting should usefully fit in the overall network of international scientific meetings and workshops. Discussions of future perspectives in elementary particle physics and future research directions seemed to be called for. However, any thinking about the future, had to be founded on the past and present achievements.

The Adriatic conferences used to be topical meetings, organized in three-year intervals. However, the postponement of the Meeting has to some extent broadened the subjects which have been covered this year. The Meeting has covered several interconnected and currently interesting topics in particle physics - ranging from electroweak phenomenology testing the standard theory, including perturbative and nonperturbative QCD, chiral perturbation theory, bound-state calculations, finite-temperature theory, neutrino physics, heavy-quark effective theories, Higgs and top physics, rare decays and CP violation in K- and B-physics - up to nonaccelerator physics and field-theoretical methods at interfaces to solid state physics and cosmology. We have deliberately arranged the contents of this volume in five sections as follows:

1. QCDoing
2. Hadronic Physics
3. Electroweak Physics
4. TeV Energy Physics / Beyond the Standard Model
5. Astroparticle/Cosmology

Adriatic Meetings have been organized by the Rudjer Boskovic Institute and the Physics Department of the University of Zagreb. Let us mention that the Conference used to be sponsored by a number of international organizations. We wish to express our gratitude to those persons (in particularly S. Pallua) getting us in touch with some of the sponsors (listed separately).

We are indebted to the Phys Dept. staff (L. Kroflin, K. Krsnik, V. Polić, Lj. Šimičić) for administrative assistance during the long preparational period. We are grateful to Dijana Dominis for her efforts as the conference secretary, to Dubravka Štengl for the organizational help during the Meeting, and to Dubravko Horvat for his help with photos. During the whole period we had invaluable help from Krešimir Kumerički, including his technical assistence to bring this volume to its final form.