The present volume contains the text of the invited talks delivered at the Eighth International Conference on Recent Progress in Many-Body Theories held at SchloB Seggau, Province of Styria, Austria, during the period August 22-26, 1994. The pro ceedings of the Fifth Conference (Oulu, Finland 1987), the Sixth Conference (Arad, Israel 1989) and the Seventh Conference (Minneapolis, USA 1991) have been published. by Plenum as the first three volumes of this series. Papers from the First Conference (Trieste, Italy 1978) comprise Nuclear Physics volume A328, Nos. 1 and 2, the Second Conference (Oaxtepec, Mexico 1979) was published by Springer-Verlag as volume 142 of "Lecture Notes in Physics," entitled "Recent Progress in Many Body Theories." Vol ume 198 of the same series contains the papers from the Third Conference (Altenberg, 1983). These volumes intend to cover a broad spectrum of current research topics in physics that benefit from the application of many-body theories for their elucidation. At the same time there is a focus on the development and refinement of many-body methods. One of the major aims of the conference series has been to foster the exchange of ideas among physicists working in such diverse areas as nuclear physics, quantum chemistry, complex systems, lattice Hamiltonians, quantum fluids and condensed matter physics. The present volume contains contributions from all these areas. th The conference was dedicated on the occasion of Ludwig Boltzmann's 150 birthday."

The contributions presented in this volume address graduate students as wellas researchers. They are intelligible and pedagogically well-written reviewsof the most recent developments in quantum field theory and both quantum gravity and quantum supergravity. Alongside technical problems of field quantization the reader will also find careful discussions of the conceptual framework and of applications to quantum cosmology.

The papers contained in this volume are invited lec- tures presented at the 21st "Universit~tswochen fUr Kern- physik" in Schladming in February 1982. To consider electro- magnetic and weak interactions as manifestations of a single theory is a standpoint, which is generally accepted by now. The goal of the school was to outline the present state of this unified theory and to discuss possible future developments. Thanks to the generous support provided by the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research, the Styrian Government and other sponsors, it was again possible to invite experts in the field as lecturers. The lecture notes have been reexamined by the authors and are now published in their final form to enable a larger number of physicists to profit from them. Since the lectures are already quite voluminous, we have decided to restrict the publication to the lectures themselves and omit all seminars, interesting as they were, as well as all details connected with the meeting. It is a pleasure to thank all the lecturers for their efforts, making it possible to speed up publication. Thanks are also due to L. Pittner for organisation and proof-reading as well as to Mrs. Krenn and Mrs. Neuhold for the careful typing of the papers. H. Mitter Acta Physica Austriaca, Suppl. XXIV, 3-62 (1982) (c) by Springer-Verlag 1982 INTRODUCTION TO GAUGE THEORIES OF ELECTRO- + WEAK INTERACTIONS by G. ECKER Institut fUr Theoretische Physik Universitat Wien, Austria TABLE OF CONTENTS I.

The present volume contains the text of the invited talks delivered at the Eighth International Conference on Recent Progress in Many-Body Theories held at SchloB Seggau, Province of Styria, Austria, during the period August 22-26, 1994. The pro ceedings of the Fifth Conference (Oulu, Finland 1987), the Sixth Conference (Arad, Israel 1989) and the Seventh Conference (Minneapolis, USA 1991) have been published. by Plenum as the first three volumes of this series. Papers from the First Conference (Trieste, Italy 1978) comprise Nuclear Physics volume A328, Nos. 1 and 2, the Second Conference (Oaxtepec, Mexico 1979) was published by Springer-Verlag as volume 142 of "Lecture Notes in Physics," entitled "Recent Progress in Many Body Theories." Vol ume 198 of the same series contains the papers from the Third Conference (Altenberg, 1983). These volumes intend to cover a broad spectrum of current research topics in physics that benefit from the application of many-body theories for their elucidation. At the same time there is a focus on the development and refinement of many-body methods. One of the major aims of the conference series has been to foster the exchange of ideas among physicists working in such diverse areas as nuclear physics, quantum chemistry, complex systems, lattice Hamiltonians, quantum fluids and condensed matter physics. The present volume contains contributions from all these areas. th The conference was dedicated on the occasion of Ludwig Boltzmann's 150 birthday."

This volume contains the Proceedings of the "XXIV. Inter nationale Universitatswochen fur Kernphysik" held in Schlad ming, Austria, in February 1985. It consists of the written versions of the lectures (3-4 hours) given at this winter school and includes also most of the seminars (30-50 minutes) presented. In choosing the topic for the 1985 meeting, our aim was to give an account of the present understanding of the nucleon-nucleon as well as nucleon-antinucleon inter actions. This field, which is of definite relevance in nuclear and particle physics, has witnessed a rapid develop ment in recent times both in theory and experiment. New evidence has emerged in the whole range from low to extremely high energies. It was an exciting experience to bring to gether knowledge from the very domains of nuclear and high energy physics as well as to meet the respective researchers. Thanks to the efforts of the lecturers, who did a splendid job in presenting the lectures and in preparing their lecture notes, a comprehensive insight into the hadronic interaction between nucleons and anti-nucleons was achieved. The lecture notes were reconsidered by the authors after the meeting and are now being published in their final form. The seminars mainly dealt with specific topics currently under investiga tion within this rather wide field. We are grateful to all authors for their efforts, as they made it possible to speed up the publication of these proceedings."

The papers contained in this volume are lectures and seminars presented at the 20th "Universitatswochen fUr Kernphysik" in Schladming in February 1981. The goal of this school was to review some rapidly developing branches in mathematical physics. Thanks to the generous support provided by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research, the Styrian Government and other sponsors, it has been possible to keep up with the - by now already traditional - standards of this school. The lecture notes have been reexamined by the authors after the school and are now published in their final form, so that a larger number of physicists may profit from them. Because of necessary limitations in space all de- tails connected with the meeting have been omitted and only brief outlines of the seminars were incl~ded. It is a pleasure to thank all the lecturers for their efforts, which made it possible to speed up the publi- cation. Thanks are also due to Mrs. Krenn for the careful typing of the notes. H. Mitter L. Pittner Acta Physica Austriaca, Supp\. XXIII, 3-28 (1981) (c) by Springer-Verlag 1981 CLASSICAL SCATTERING THEORY+ by W. THIRRING Institut fur Theoretische Physik Universitat Wien, Austria 1. INTRODUCTION It was first recognized by Hunziker [1] that the notions of scattering theory play an important role in classical mechanics. It turned out [2] that it leads to non-trivial information for the global properties of the solutions of the classical trajectories.

This volume contains the written versions of lectures held at the "23. Internationale Universit tswochen fUr Kernphysik" in Schladming, Austria, in February 1984. Once again the generous support of our sponsors, the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research, the Styrian Government and others, had made it possible to organize this school. The aim of the topics chosen for the meeting was to present different aspects of stochastic methods and techniques. These methods have opened up new ways to attack problems in a broad field ranging from quantum mechanics to quantum field theory. Thanks to the efforts of the lecturers it was possible to take this development into account and show relations to areas where stochastic methods have been used for a long time. Due to limited space only short manuscript versions of the many seminars presented could be included. The lecture notes were reexamined by the authors after the school and are now published in their final form. It is a pleasure to thank all the lecturers for their efforts which made it possible to speed up publication. Thanks are also due to Mrs. Neuhold for her careful typing of the notes. H. Mitter L. Pittner Acta Physica Austriaca, Suppl. XXVI, 3-52 (1984) (c) by Springer-Verlag 1984 STOCHASTIC PROCESSES - QUANTUM PHYSICS+ by L. STREIT Universitat Bielefeld BiBoS D-4800 Bielefeld. FR Germany I.

This volume contains the written versions of the lectures held at the "22 Internationale Universitatswochen fur Kern- physik" in Schladming, Austria, in February 1983. The generous support of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research, the Styrian Government and other sponsors once again made it possible for expert lecturers to be invited. In choosing the topics, the aim was to achieve a balance between the theoretical and phenomenological contributions; on the theoretical side, discussions centred on the impact of different approaches to quantum field theory on the ele- mentary particle scenario, on the other, on the recent re- sults in high energy physics which have provided fresh moti- vations for new kinds of experiments as well as having had a profound influehce on cosmology. Limited space has made it impossible to include manuscripts of the many interesting seminars presented. The lecture notes were reexamined by the authors after the school and are now published in their final form. It is a pleasure to thank all the lecturers for their efforts, which made it possible to speed up publication. Thanks are also due to Mrs. Neuhold for the careful typing of the notes. H. Mitter C. B. Lang Acta Physica Austriaca, Suppl. XXV, ~70 (1983) @ by Springer-Verlag 1983 THE EARLY UNIVERSE - FACTS AND FICTION+ by G. BaRNER Max-Planck-Institut fUr Physik und Astrcphysik Institut fUr Astrophysik Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 1 8046 Garching b. MUnchen, FRG 1.