Abstract. We show that the S-matrix of a quantum many-body, short-range, single-channel system has a meromorphic continuation whose poles occur at most at the dilation-analytic resonances [28], [24] and at the eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian. In passing, we prove the main spectral theorem (on location of the essential spectrum) and asymptotic completeness for the mentioned class of systems.Introduction. In this paper we study the analytic properties of the scattering matrix for many-body, short-range, single-channel systems. Our main theorem asserts that the scattering matrix has a meromorphic continuation in the energy parameter into a certain sector of the complex plane. The poles of this continuation occur only at eigenvalues of the dilation analytic family //(f) associated with the Hamiltonian H. By Balslev's and Combes' theorem the latter eigenvalues lead to the poles of the meromorphic continuation of the matrix elements , (7/-z)_1F> on the dilation analytic vectors across the continuous spectrum into the second Riemann sheet. Moreover, if the potentials are nice enough so that the negative axis belongs to the meromorphic domain, then the poles on this axis occur at most at the negative eigenvalues of H.To prepare the ground for the proof of our main theorem we prove most of the theorems of the spectral and scattering theory for single-channel systems. These results are not new, but some of the theorems (e.g. the asymptotic completeness) contain improvements over the previous results.Most of the work is done in an abstract setting and only at the end we check the assumptions of the abstract theorems. This allows us to treat the problems of different character separately. The abstract approach has forced us to introduce the notions of the abstract Schrödinger operator and abstract many-body system. We hope they will be useful in extending our methods to other systems.The paper is self-contained; all necessary definitions are given in the text. § §I-V contain the preparatory abstract results; the main theorem is formulated and proved in §VI, where all relevant definitions and preliminary results for A/-body systems are also given. § §VII and VIII deal with the estimates of certain operators built out of the potentials and the free resolvent. These estimates are needed in the theorem of §VI on the behavior of (77 -z)"1 near the continuous spectrum. In