Weak decays of pseudo Goldstone bosons

A short overview of recent progress in describing kaon and pion decays within Chiral Perturbation Theory is presented. Particular attention is devoted to the issues of final-state interactions and isospin breaking in $K \to 2 \pi$, as well as to the estimate of long-distance contributions in $K \to \ell^+\ell^- (\pi)$.Comment: 13 pages, invited talk at Chiral Dynamics 2000, Newport News, USA, 17-22 July 200

Flavour Physics and Implication for New Phenomena

Flavour physics represents one of the most interesting and, at the same time, less understood sector of the Standard Theory. On the one hand, the peculiar pattern of quark and lepton masses, and their mixing angles, may be the clue to some new dynamics occurring at high-energy scales. On the other hand, the strong suppression of flavour-changing neutral-current processes, predicted by the Standard Theory and confirmed by experiments, represents a serious challenge to extend the Theory. This article reviews both these aspects of flavour physics from a theoretical perspective.Comment: Contribution to "The Standard Theory up to the Higgs discovery - 60 years of CERN", Ed. by L. Maiani and G. Rolandi (v2: minor typos corrected

The Challenges of Flavour Physics

The open problems and the most recent developments in flavour physics are briefly reviewed. Particular attention is devoted to the current "anomalies" in the CKM picture and their possible interpretation in beyond-the-Standard-Model frameworks.Comment: 13 pages, plenary talk at ICHEP 2010 (Paris, July 22-28, 2010). V2: A few typos corrected and a few refs adde

Rare decays: theory vs. experiments

We present an overview of rare K, D and B decays. Particular attention is devoted to those flavour-changing neutral-current processes of K and B mesons that offer the possibility of new significant tests of the Standard Model. The sensitivity of these modes to physics beyond the Standard Model and the status of their experimental study are also discussed.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, invited talk at 20th International Symposium on Lepton and Photon Interactions at High Energies, Rome, August 2001; v2 & v3: minor modifications, few references adde