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This paper is a simple, quick guide to KLOE, the flagship experiment of INFN’s \(\phi \)-factory DA\(\Phi \)NE at Frascati. KLOE’s design principles, properties, its physics accomplishments and its impact on “flavor physics”, are described in terms comprehensible to non specialists.

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The KLOE experiment has successfully completed its data taking in March, 2006, with a total integrated luminosity of about 2.5 fb\(^{-1}\). The analyses of 20% of the whole data sample have been mostly finalized and new results relevant, among other issues, for improving the sensitivity on the \(\mathcal {CP}\), \(\mathcal {CPT}\) violation parameters and for testing unitarity in the first row of the CKM matrix have been recently published. This paper reviews the major achievements in kaon and hadron physics.

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I overview the changes and the new results in the 2006 Particle Data Group Edition of the kaon sections. I also review the major improvements in the whole PDG.

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The progress in determining the coupling constants of mesonic chiral Lagrangians is reviewed, with emphasis on the work performed in three successive European Networks (Eurodaphne I and II, Euridice). Reliable estimates of those constants are essential for making full use of next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations in chiral perturbation theory. The precision in the values of the strong coupling constants of \(O(p^4)\) has been increasing steadily over the years. The situation is less satisfactory in the nonleptonic weak sector where further phenomenological input and more theoretical work are needed. A lot of progress has recently been achieved for electromagnetic coupling constants occurring in radiative corrections for mesonic processes at low energies.

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We briefly illustrate a few tests of quantum mechanics which can be performed with entangled neutral kaon pairs at a \({\mit \Phi }\)-factory. This includes a quantitative formulation of Bohr’s complementarity principle, the quantum eraser phenomenon and various forms of Bell inequalities.

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A summary of recent progress in Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) at the two-loop level is given. A short introduction to ChPT is included, along with an explanation of the usefulness of developing ChPT for partially quenched QCD. Further, our recent work in partially quenched ChPT is reviewed, and a few comments are given on older work in mesonic ChPT at the two-loop level. In particular, we quote the present best values for the low-energy constants of the \(\mathcal {O}(p^4)\) chiral Lagrangian.

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Chiral low-energy constants incorporate short-distance information from the dynamics involving heavier degrees of freedom not present in the chiral Lagrangian. We have studied the contribution of the lightest resonances to the chiral low-energy constants, up to \({\cal O}(p^6)\), within a systematic procedure guided by the large-\(N_{C}\) limit of QCD and also including short-distance asymptotic constraints.

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The structure of leading logarithms in chiral perturbation theory was already studied some time ago by S. Weinberg, Physica A96, 327 (1979) and recently by M. Buchler, G. Colangelo, Eur. Phys. J. C32, 427 (2003). Because the leading logarithms may generate sizable numerical contributions to observables, it would be very interesting to know them or even sum them up to every order in the chiral expansion. We investigate these possibilities for two specific Green functions in chiral perturbation theory with two flavours, in the chiral limit.

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We determine the \(\bar {q}q\) condensate for quark masses from zero up to that of the strange quark within a phenomenologically successful modelling of continuum QCD by solving the quark Schwinger–Dyson equation. The existence of multiple solutions to this equation is the key to an accurate and reliable extraction of this condensate using the operator product expansion. We explain why alternative definitions fail to give the physical condensate.

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Migdal’s model on the spectrum of vector mesons is reassessed. We discuss how its departure from a Padé approximant is closely linked to the issue of quark–hadron duality breakdown. We also show that Migdal’s model is not truly a model of large-\(N_{c}\) QCD.

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We review the present status of the hadronic light-by-light contribution to muon \(g-2\) and critically compare recent calculations.

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The same, well known, \(\det \,{\mit \Sigma }+\det \,{\mit \Sigma }^\dagger \) term in effective theories, which ’t Hooft showed is generated by instantons in QCD and which resolves the U\(_{\rm A}\)(1) problem giving mass, in particular to the \(\eta '\) is for three light flavors shown to give three classical minima along the U\(_{\rm A}(1)\) circle. The three minima are related to the center Z(3) of SU(3). The term also contributes, in a similar way as the diquark model of Jaffe, to an inverted scalar mass spectrum for the light scalars. The three vacua suggests a connection to the strong CP problem and confinement.

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In this talk the landscape in \(B\) physics at the time of the Moscow ICHEP 2006 Conference is sketched, underlying a few highlights. Also a brief review of the contributions in the field within the Euridice EC network in the last four years is presented.

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I discuss low energy aspects of heavy meson decays, where there is at least one heavy meson in the final state. Examples are \(B\)–\(\overline {B}\) mixing, \(B \rightarrow D \overline {D}\), \(B \rightarrow D \eta '\), and \(B \rightarrow D \gamma \). The analysis is performed in the heavy quark limit within heavy–light chiral perturbation theory. Coefficients of 1/\(N_{c}\) suppressed chiral Lagrangian terms (beyond factorization) have been estimated by means of a heavy–light chiral quark model.

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Current status of the \({\cal O}(\alpha _{s}^2)\) calculations of \({\cal B}(\bar {B} \to X_s \gamma )\) is summarized.

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Dalitz plot analyses of \(D^0\) events reconstructed for the hadronic decay \(D^{0} \to \bar K^{\,0} K^+ K^-\) and \(D^{0} \to \bar K^{\,0} \pi ^+ \pi ^-\) are presented here. The analyses use data collected with the BaBar detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy \(e^+e^-\) storage rings at SLAC running at center-of-mass energies on and 40 MeV below the \({\mit \Upsilon }(4S)\) resonance.

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This is a follow-up to our earlier work for the energies and the charge (vector) and matter (scalar) distributions for \(S\)-wave states in a heavy-light meson, where the heavy quark is static and the light quark has a mass about that of the strange quark. We now study excited states of these mesons with higher angular momentum and with radial nodes. The calculation is carried out with dynamical fermions on a \(16^3\! \times \! 32\) lattice with a lattice spacing \(a\approx 0.10\) fm. The lattice configurations were generated by the UKQCD Collaboration. Attempts are now being made to understand these results in terms of the Dirac equation. In nature the closest equivalent of this heavy-light system is the \(B_s\) meson, which allows us to compare our lattice calculations to experimental results (where available) or give a prediction where the \(P\)-wave states should lie. We pay particular attention to the spin-orbit splitting, to see which one of the states (for a given angular momentum \(L\)) has the lower energy.

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The interplay between flavour symmetries connecting \(B_s \to KK\) decays with the recently measured \(B_d \to K^{\,0} {\bar K}^{\,0}\) decay and QCD Factorisation opens new strategies to describe the decays \(B_s \to K^{\,0} {\bar K}^{\,0}\) and \(B_s \to K^+ K^-\) in the SM and in supersymmetry. A new relation, emerging from the sum-rule for the \(B_s \to K^{\,0} {\bar K}^{\,0}\) decay mode, is presented offering a new way to determine the weak mixing angle \(\phi _s\) of the \(B_s\) system.

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The talk is intended to motivate the use of DA\(\Phi \)NE-2 running at the \(\phi \) peak as an intense, clean source of low-momentum charged and neutral kaons. It covers a few open problems still unsolved after more than twenty-five years and the physics (some of it still novel) that could be learned only in this way. And, of course, the answer to the above question is NO.

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Flavour changing neutral current processes, being strongly suppressed in the Standard Model (SM), provide a unique window to new physics at scales much above the electroweak scale. Here, we summarise the recent progress in flavour physics studies of the Littlest Higgs model with \(T\)-parity, both in the quark and lepton sector. Particular emphasis is put on various correlations that could distinguish this model from other extensions of the SM.

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A short review on hypernuclear weak decay is presented. Special regard is devoted to the recent progress concerning the determination of the \({\mit \Gamma }_n\) /\({\mit \Gamma }_p\) ratio and the asymmetry parameters.

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It is shown that Majorana neutrino’s absolute mass scale measurement can in principle be carried out using intense \(\beta \) beams. This could be achieved by counting the lepton number violating events in a two step process: the nuclear decay in flight and the subsequent neutrino induced interaction. The relativistic boost results in the gain in the content of Majorana neutrino helicities responsible for the lepton number violation. A simple formula to calculate this gain is presented. Specific examples of the two step processes are indicated and relevant cross sections are given.

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The main idea of the first order formalism is demonstrated on a toy example of spin-0 particle. The full formalism for spin-1 is applied to the vector formfactor of the pion and its high-energy behaviour is studied.

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After a brief review of the present knowledge on the \(\sigma \) scalar state, the process \(\gamma \gamma \to \pi ^0\pi ^0\) is emphasized as a crucial test for its comprehension. The feasibility of the measurement at the DA\(\Phi \)NE collider is discussed.

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The formation of hadronic atoms in multichannel systems is discussed. These atoms created in intermediate states produce different signals in the inelastic and elastic transitions. In the first case the scattering amplitude is dominated by a simple pole. In the second case an accompanying zero arises. Such structures may be quite distinct in two channel cases but disappear with the increasing number of open channels.

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A model for total cross-sections incorporating QCD jet cross-sections and soft gluon resummation is described and compared with present data on \(pp\) and \({\bar p}p\) cross-sections. Predictions for LHC are presented for different parameter sets. It is shown that they differ according to the small \(x\)-behaviour of available parton density functions.

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A short review of both theoretical and experimental aspects of the radiative return method is presented with the emphasize on the results obtained within the EURIDICE network. It is shown that the method gives not only possibility of an independent, from the scan method, measurement of the hadronic cross section, but also can provide information concerning details of the hadronic interactions.

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A possibility to study final state radiation near the \(\pi ^+\pi ^-\) threshold region at the \(\Phi \)-factory DA\(\Phi \)NE is discussed. The dependence on the final state radiation model is tested by a Monte Carlo event generator that includes the contribution of the direct \(\phi \to \pi ^+\pi ^-\gamma \) decay, the double-resonance \(\phi \to \rho \gamma \to \pi ^+\pi ^-\gamma \) contribution and “pure” final state radiation both in the framework of the sQED model and in the Resonance Perturbation Theory. Finally, a model-independent way to study final state radiation is proposed.

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Using the radiative return allows for precision measurements of energy-dependent cross sections at particle factories. In the first part, the method of the measurement and its application at the KLOE experiment will be explained. In the second part, the status of the ongoing analyses based on the 2002 data set is presented. These analyses will improve the published result in many aspects and allow for important cross checks.

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The current status of the muon anomalous magnetic moment is discussed. The leading order hadronic contribution is reevaluated basing on the new data on \(e^+e^-\) annihilation. The experimental value is about 3.3 standard deviations higher than the Standard Model prediction.

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The muon anomalous magnetic moment is one of the most precisely measured quantities in particle physics. Recent high precision measurements (0.54 ppm) at Brookhaven reveal a “discrepancy” by 3.2 standard deviations from the electroweak Standard Model which could be a hint for an unknown contribution from physics beyond the Standard Model. This triggered numerous speculations about the possible origin of the “missing piece”. The remarkable 14-fold improvement of the previous CERN experiment, actually animated a multitude of new theoretical efforts which lead to a substantial improvement of the prediction of \(a_\mu \). The dominating uncertainty of the prediction, caused by strong interaction effects, could be reduced substantially, due to new hadronic cross section measurements in electron–positron annihilation at low energies. After an introduction and a brief description of the principle of the experiment, I present a major update and review the status of the theoretical prediction and discuss the role of the hadronic vacuum polarization effects and the hadronic light-by-light scattering contribution. Prospects for the future will be briefly discussed. As, in electroweak precision physics, the muon \(g-2\) shows the largest established deviation between theory and experiment at present, it will remain one of the hot topics for further investigations.