Book Description

This work originated in a series of lectures on meson and baryon ex cited states which I gave at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in the fall of 1962. The notes of these lectures were issued as a Stanford Uni versity report (SLAC-13) in March, 1963. In the fall of 1963, I gave a revised set of lectures on meson and baryon spectroscopy at Indiana University. In both cases, the talks were given primarily for experi mental physicists. In preparing the notes of these talks for pUblication, I have added some introductory material on pions, nucleons, kaons, and hyperons. My main emphasis is on the experimental facts concerning the spectros copy of the mesons and baryons and on the use of conservation laws in their interpretation. I have either mentioned briefly or omitted entirely explanations which depend on dynamical models. Although I have given a number of facts about the electromagnetic and weak decays of some mesons and baryons, I have not discussed the theory of these decays. This is not a comprehensive review of the subject of the strongly interacting particles, and the list of references is not complete. Also, I have not always devoted time to a subject in proportion to its impor tance, but have spent more time on topics which have particularly interested me. Nevertheless, I hope that I have provided a useful summary of the most important facts about the spectroscopy of the mesons and baryons.