Abstract :
Hypernuclei represent the first steps towards an extension of the periodic system into the sector of strangeness and thus add a third dimension to our evolving picture of nuclei. They provide a large variety of new and exciting perspectives ranging from new dynamical symmetries in hypernuclei spectra, non-mesonic weak decays, and the interplay of the quark-exchange and meson-exchange aspects of strong baryon–baryon forces in the flavor SU(3) world. Furthermore, double hypernuclei may provide a doorway towards exotic quark states. In the near future, electroproduction experiments at TJNAF and MAMI-C will add more detailed information on the structure of single hypernuclei states. On the long term, experiments at the Japanese hadron facility and the high energy storage ring for antiprotons at the future GSI accelerator facility will allow us to extend high resolution γ-ray studies also into the domain of double hypernuclei.
