This thesis focuses on searches for squarks with the ATLAS detector in "compressed" scenarios where the scalar top is very close in mass to the lightest supersymmetric particle. These models are theoretically appealing because the presence of a quasi-degenerate scalar top enhances the self-annihilation cross-section of the lightest supersymmetric particle, acting therefore as a regulator of the dark matter relic density. Two main analyses are presented: the first is a search for scalar tops decaying to charm quarks. The identification of jets originating from the charm quark is very challenging due to its short lifetime. The calibration of tools for charm-tagging has paved the way to measuring the decay of the Higgs boson to pairs of charm quarks. The second analysis presented is the development of a novel technique for reconstructing low momentum b-hadrons. This tool has enabled the ATLAS collaboration to explore topologies that were previously inaccessible.

Astrophysical observations implying the existence of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, which are not described by the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics, have led to extensions of the SM predicting new particles that could be directly produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Based on 2015 and 2016 ATLAS proton-proton collision data, this thesis presents searches for the supersymmetric partner of the top quark, for Dark Matter, and for DarkEnergy, in signatures with jets and missing transverse energy. Muon detection is key to some of the most important LHC physics results, including the discovery of the Higgs boson and the measurement of its properties. The efficiency with which muons can be detected with the ATLAS detector is measured using Z boson decays. The performance of high-precision Monitored Drift Tube muon chambers under background rates similar to the ones expected for the High Luminosity-LHC is studied.

The turning-on of the Large Hadron Collider is the momentous milestone in our quest for new physics beyond the Standard Model. Soon, we will be presented with the task of detecting, identifying, and studying the possibly large parameter space of the underlying model. In this thesis, we will look at some possible extensions to the SM, their signatures at colliders, and possible search strategies to explore the new physics in a model-independent way. In chapter 2, we study the extended neutral gauge sector of the Littlest Higgs model at the 500 GeV e+e- collider using the fermion pair production and Higgs associate production channel. We find that these channels can provide an accurate determination of the fundamental parameters and thus allows the verification of the little Higgs mechanism designed to cancel the Higgs mass quadratic divergence. In chapter 3, we study the ATLAS supersymmetry searches proposed for the 14 TeV pp collider using the $\sim$ 70k models of the phenomenological Minimal Supersymmetric Model (pMSSM) moldel set, that have survived many theoretical and experimental constraints. Since pMSSM does not make any simplifying assumptions about its SUSY-breaking mechanism at high scale, this encompasses a broad class of Supersymmetric models. We find that even though these searches were optimized mostly for mSUGRA signals, they are relatively robust in observing the more general pMSSM models. For the case of models in which squarks and gluinos have mass below 1 TeV, essentially all of these models ($> 99\%$) were observable in at least one of these searches, with 1 $fb^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity allowing for an uncertainty of 50\% in the SM background. We found that 0-lepton searches are the most powerful searches, while searches with 1-2 leptons do not have coverage as good as has been shown for mSUGRA. We then study possible reasons why a model could not be observed. These difficult models mostly include those with long-lived charginos which lead to small Missing Tranverse Energy (MET) and models with squeezed spectra which lead to soft jets that fail the jet cuts. In chapter 4, we study similar searches that have been carried out by ATLAS at the 7 TeV LHC. We found that systematic uncertainty again plays an important role in determining the coverage of the searches. This is especially true for searches with a large SM background, such as $n$-jet 0 lepton searches. We study the implication of a null result from the 7 TeV LHC. We find that the degree of fine-tuning in the pMSSM depends on the prior in which we scan our 19-dimensional space, but overall it is not as large as in mSUGRA. We find that a null result at the 7 TeV with $10 fb^{-1}$ and 20\% systematic errors would imply a need for a higher energy e+e- machine than the 500 GeV ILC to study Supersymmetry. Continuing on along the line of Supersymmetry, in chapter 5 we explore the possibility of adding one more generation to the MSSM (4GMSSM). We find that the CP-odd A boson can be very light due to the contribution of the heavy 4th generation fermion loops while all other Higgs particles (including the CP-even {\it h}) are all quite heavy. The parameter $tan(\beta)$ is strongly constrained to be between 0.5 and 2 due to perturbativity requirements on Yukawa couplings. We study the electroweak constraints as well as collider signatures on the possibility of a light A of mass $\sim$115 GeV. As for an LHC discovery, we find that this light A can be seen in the standard 2-photon Higgs search channel with cross-section more than an order of magnitude greater than that of the SM Higgs. In the last two chapters, we study possible search strategies to explore the new physics in a model-independent way. In chapter 6, we attempt to show how one could be largely agnostic about the underlying model in exploring the complete kinematically-allowed parameter space of pair-produced color octet particles (with mass $m_{\tilde{g}}$) that each directly decay into two jets plus a neutral stable particle (with mass $m_{\tilde{B}}$) that would escape the detectors and appear as MET. The kinematics of this process can be completely described by two parameters $m_{\tilde {g}}$ and $m_{\tilde {B}}$ , and in particular their splitting determines the softness or hardness of jets from the decay products. In order to cover the whole parameter space, one would need separate searches for different regions. We show that optimizing the final cuts for every ($m_{\tilde {g}}$, $m_{\tilde {B}}$) point, and combining all searches, can extend the coverage significantly. Since this is just based on the kinematics of the decay, this result can be easily interpreted for any model with this decay topology. In chapter 7, we carry this model-independent approach further in jets plus missing energy searches, by proposing that one should bin the measured data (or simulated SM background) differentially in MET and $H_T$ (scalar sum of invisible energy) for each search, and use them to set limits on any model of interest. We demonstrate this technique by carrying out a search similar to that studied in chapter 6, with one added decay step for the color octet particle, mainly it decays to 2 jets and another particle (with mass $m_{\tilde {W}}$) and it in turn decays to the neutral stable particle and 2 jets. We study different kinematic regions and set bounds in this 3-dimensional parameter space ($m_{\tilde {g}}$, $m_{\tilde {W}}$, $m_{\tilde {B}}$).

Supersymmetry (SUSY) is a new symmetry that relates bosons and fermions, which has strong support at both the mathematical and the physical level. This book offers a comprehensive review, following the development of SUSY from its very early days up to present. The order of the contributions should provide the reader with the historical development as well as the latest theoretical updates and interpretations, and experimental constraints from particle accelerators and dark matter searches. It is a great pleasure to bring together here contributions from authors who initiated or have contributed significantly to the development of this theory over so many years. To present a balanced point of view, the book also includes a closing contribution that attempts to describe the physics beyond the Standard Model in the absence of SUSY. The contributions to this book have been previously published in The European Physical Journal C - Particles and Fields.

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.

This proceedings volume contains pedagogical lectures on theoretical and experimental particle physics, cosmology and atomic trap physics. It also includes additional contributions that provide up-to-date information on new experimental results from accelerators, underground laboratories, and nuclear astrophysics. This combination of pedagogical talks and topical short talks provides comprehensive information to researchers in the fields of particle physics, cosmology and atomic trap physics. Sample Chapter(s). Chapter 1: New Physics in B and K Decays (1,704 KB). Contents: Cosmic Ray Velocity and Electric Charge Measurements in the AMS Experiment (L Arruda); Flavor and Chiral Oscillations with Dirac Spinors (A E Bernardini); Modification of the Casimir Effect Due to a Minimal Length Scale (U Harbach); Parton Energy Loss, Saturation, and Recombination at BRAHMS (E-J Kim); Spatial Confinement and Thermal Deconfinement in the Compactified Gross-Neveu Model (J M C Malbouisson); Currents on Superconducting Strings in an Unusual Environment (M A Metlitski); QCD Results at CDF (O Norniella); Quantization of Galilean Covariant Fields (E S Santos); Physics of Heavy Flavour at CDF (S Torre); Resonance Production at STAR (H Zhang); and other papers. Readership: Graduate students, researchers and academics in high energy physics, particle physics and astrophysics.