COMPASS: meson spectroscopy and low-energy meson dynamics

Within the broad physics programme of the COMPASS collaboration at CERN SPS, soft reactions of high-energy hadron beams on different nuclear targets are investigated. Aiming at a better understanding of the strong interaction, novel results range from tests of chiral symmetry breaking to properties of diffractively produced meson resonances studied in their multi-particle decays, such as the a1(1420) with unusual properties. The talk will highlight the challenges of the employed experimental techniques, and as well of the analysis methods, that are developed to a large extent along with the analysis of the world’s largest data sets in the field.