We consider here a variational method for describing composite particles. We use equal time anticommutators/commutators, and regard the field operators as arbitrary except for the constraint from the above. The expectation value of the Hamiltonian is extremized both with respect to the field operators and with respect to the wave functions, the former extremization being the new feature here. Comparison with other calculations has been made, and correspondence with them has also been established. We further show here how an “effective mass” can arise from a potential.

The static properties such as magnetic moments, charge radii and axial vector coupling constant ratios of the quark core of baryons in the nucleon octet have been calculated in an independent-quark model based on the Dirac equation with equally mixed scalar-vector potential in linear form in the current quark mass limit. The results obtained with appropriate corrections due to centre-of-mass motion are in reasonable agreement with experimental data. The magnetic moments of the quark core of baryons in the charmed andb-flavoured sectors have also been calculated with this model and the overall predictions so obtained compare very well with other model predictions.

Weak electric and magnetic form factors for semileptonic baryon decays are calculated in a relativistic quark model based on the Dirac equation with the independent-quark confining potential of the formV_q(r)=1/2(1+γ⁰)(a²r+V₀). The values obtained for (g₂/g₁) are not very much different from the nonrelativistic results of Donoghue and Holstein. The values of (g₁/f₁) extracted from our model calculations of (f₂/f₁) in the Cabibbo limit compare well with the experimental values. The values of (f₂/f₁) for various semileptonic transitions are also estimated incorporating phenomenologically the effect of nonzerog₂ in the ratio (g₁/f₁). It is found that the SU(3)-symmetry breaking does not generate significant departures in (f₂/f₁) values from the corresponding Cabibbo predictions.

Electric field induced tunneling is studied in three different types of quantum wells by solving time-independent effective mass equation in analytic methods based on three different Airy function approaches. Comparison of different Airy function methods indicates that they are identical and connected to each other by the Breit-Wigner formula.

The working group on astroparticle and neutrino physics at WHEPP-9 covered a wide range of topics. The main topics were neutrino physics at INO, neutrino astronomy and recent constraints on dark energy coming from cosmological observations of large scale structure and CMB anisotropy.