Flavour Dynamics - Central Mysteries of the Standard Model

Abstract

After pointing out the amazing success of the CKM description in accommodating the phenomenology of flavour changing neutral currents I review the status of theoretical technologies for extracting CKM parameters from data. I sketch novel directions, namely attempts to deal with quark-hadron duality in a (semi)quantitative way and to develop a QCD description of two-body modes of $B$ mesons. After commenting on predictions for $\epsilon ^{\prime}/\epsilon$ and CP asymmetries in B decays I address indirect probes for New Physics in $D^0$ oscillations and CP violation, in $K_{\mu 3}$ decays and electric dipole moments. I describe in which way searching for New Physics in B decays provides an exciting adventure with novel challenges not encountered before.