This Ph.D. thesis is a search for physics beyond the standard model (SM) of particle physics, which successfully describes the interactions and properties of all known elementary particles. However, no particle exists in the SM that can account for the dark matter, which makes up about one quarter of the energy-mass content of the universe. Understanding the nature of dark matter is one goal of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The extension of the SM with supersymmetry (SUSY) is considered a promising possibilities to explain dark matter. The nominated thesis describes a search for SUSY using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. It utilizes a final state consisting of a photon, a lepton, and a large momentum imbalance probing a class of SUSY models that has not yet been studied extensively. The thesis stands out not only due to its content that is explained with clarity but also because the author performed more or less all aspects of the thesis analysis by himself, from data skimming to limit calculations, which is extremely rare, especially nowadays in the large LHC collaborations.

The 1997 International Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics was held at the campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the Jerusalem Renaissance Hotel, from August 19th to August 25th, 1997. This was the first time that the European Physical Society had its High Energy Physics Conference outside the boundary of Europe. A total of 550 physicists participated in the conference with a total of 250 presentations in the parallel sessions and 26 presentations in the plenary sessions. The Board of the of the High Energy and Particle Physics division (HEPP) of the EPS acted as the Scientific Organizing Committee. The Board acknowl edges the help of the International Advisory Committee as well as that of the Local Organizing Committee. The conference was co-organized by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and by the Weizmann Institute of Science, with important help by physi cists from the Israeli Institute of Technology (Technion) and the Tel Aviv University.

In this workshop, the super high energy and luminosity frontiers of subnuclear physics were actively investigated. A conceptual design of the highest energy (100+100 TeV) proton-proton collider — the Eloisatron — already exists. There are many reasons to believe that supersymmetry and its local version, supergravity, could be relevant in a fundamental theory of particle reactions. The minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model (MSSM) is today phenomenologically acceptable, theoretically motivated and calculable. The present and future colliders can play a crucial role in testing supersymmetry experimentally. The purpose of the workshop was therefore to review the main features of the MSSM as well as the possible non-minimal models and the issue of gauge coupling unification. Emphasis was given to theoretical and experimental results relevant to supersymmetric particle searches at present and future colliders.

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 book contains written versions of the presentations made at the 4th International Workshop on the Identification of Dark Matter (IDM 2002), held in York, UK, in September 2002. The objective of this workshop series is to assess the status of work attempting to identify what constitutes dark matter — in particular, to consider the techniques being used, how successful they are, and what new techniques are likely to improve prospects for identifying likely dark matter candidates in the future. At IDM 2002 special emphasis was placed on recent results obtained in searches for baryonic and non-baryonic dark matter. The proceedings include reviews of major topics on dark matter, as well as short contributed talks.