Supersymmetry is at an exciting stage of development. It extends the Standard Model of particle physics into a more powerful theory that both explains more and allows more questions to be addressed. Most importantly, it opens a window for studying and testing fundamental theories at the Planck scale. Experimentally we are finally entering the intensity and energy and sensitivity regions where superpartners and supersymmetric dark matter candidates are likely to be detected, and then studied. There has been progress in understanding the remarkable physics implications of supersymmetry, including the derivation of the Higgs mechanism, the unification of the Standard Model forces, cosmological connections such as a candidate for the cold dark matter of the universe and consequences for understanding the cosmological history of the universe, and more. This volume begins with an excellent pedagogical introduction to the physics and methods and formalism of supersymmetry which is accessible to anyone with a basic knowledge of the Standard Model of particle physics.Next is an overview of open questions, followed by chapters on topics such as how to detect superpartners and tools for studying them, the current limits on superpartner masses as we enter the LHC era, the lightest superpartner as a dark matter candidate in thermal and non-thermal cosmological histories, and associated Z'' physics. Most chapters have been extended and updated from the earlier edition and some are new. This superb book will allow interested physicists to understand the coming experimental and theoretical progress in supersymmetry and the implications of discoveries of superpartners, and will also help students and workers to quickly learn new aspects of supersymmetry they want to pursue.

This book presents topics of major interest to the high energy physics community, as well as recent research results.

This PhD thesis focuses on the search for flavor-changing neutral currents in the decay of a top quark to an up-type quark (q = u, c) and the Standard Model Higgs boson, where the Higgs boson decays to bb. Further, the thesis presents the combination of this search for top quark pair events with other ATLAS searches – in the course of which the most restrictive bounds to date on tqH interactions were obtained. Following on from the discovery of the Higgs boson, it is particularly important to measure the Yukawa couplings of the Standard Model fermions; these parameters may provide crucial insights to help solve the flavor puzzle and may help reveal the presence of new physics before it is directly observed in experiments.