The LHC is in the frontline of experimental searches for New Physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Its power is accompanied by no smaller challenges in analyzing and interpreting its results. In this thesis I explore ways to parameterize new physics phenomena, design search strategies that are sensitive to them, and interpret experimental results in general new physics contexts. In particular, I discuss interpretations of the first ATLAS analysis for supersymmetry with 70/nb of integrated luminosity. I also carry a careful investigation of comprehensive search strategies for new physics with jets and missing energy signatures, and estimate the sensitivity bounds of the 7 TeV LHC to new colored particles decaying to jets and and a neutral particle that escapes detection. Finally, I discuss the implications of the recent LHC excesses hinting to a Higgs boson with mass in the range 142-147 GeV. If confirmed, this range for the Higgs mass will be an important evidence for Split Supersymmetry. I work out the phenomenological predictions of this scenario that will be tested in the very near future by a variety of experiments, including direct and indirect dark matter detection, EDM experiments searching for CP violation and the 7 TeV run of the LHC.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, is the world's largest and highest energy and highest intensity particle accelerator. Here is a timely book with several perspectives on the hoped-for discoveries from the LHC.This book provides an overview on the techniques that will be crucial for finding new physics at the LHC, as well as perspectives on the importance and implications of the discoveries. Among the accomplished contributors to this book are leaders and visionaries in the field of particle physics beyond the Standard Model, including two Nobel Laureates (Steven Weinberg and Frank Wilczek), and presumably some future Nobel Laureates, plus top younger theorists and experimenters. With its blend of popular and technical contents, the book will have wide appeal, not only to physical scientists but also to those in related fields.

Exploring the phenomenology of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, LHC Physics focuses on the first years of data collected at the LHC as well as the experimental and theoretical tools involved. It discusses a broad spectrum of experimental and theoretical activity in particle physics, from the searches for the Higgs boson and physics beyond the Standard Model to studies of quantum chromodynamics, the B-physics sector, and the properties of dense hadronic matter in heavy-ion collisions. Covering the topics in a pedagogical manner, the book introduces the theoretical and phenomenological framework of hadron collisions and presents the current theoretical models of frontier physics. It offers overviews of the main detector components, the initial calibration procedures, and search strategies. The authors also provide explicit examples of physics analyses drawn from the recently shut down Tevatron. In the coming years, or perhaps even sooner, the LHC experiments may reveal the Higgs boson and offer insight beyond the Standard Model. Written by some of the most prominent and active researchers in particle physics, this volume equips new physicists with the theory and tools needed to understand the various LHC experiments and prepares them to make future contributions to the field.

The Standard Theory of Particle Physics describes successfully the observed strong and electroweak interactions, but it is not a final theory of physics, since many aspects are not understood: (1) How can gravity be introduced in the Standard Theory? (2) How can we understand the observed masses of the leptons and quarks as well as the flavor mixing angles? (3) Why are the masses of the neutrinos much smaller than the masses of the charged leptons? (4) Is the new boson, discovered at CERN, the Higgs boson of the Standard Theory or an excited weak boson? (5) Are there new symmetries at very high energy, e.g. a broken supersymmetry? (6) Are the leptons and quarks point-like or composite particles? (7) Are the leptons and quarks at very small distances one-dimensional objects, e.g. superstrings? This proceedings volume comprises papers written by the invited speakers discussing the many important issues of the new physics to be discovered at the Large Hadron Collider.

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 ($m_{\tilde {g}}$, $m_{\tilde {W}}$, $m_{\tilde {B}}$).

After an extensive overview of the Standard Model and of the theory and phenomenology of Supersymmetry, this book describes the recent development of the ATLAS Particle Flow algorithm, a hadronic reconstruction technique aiming at enhancing the sensitivity of the experiment to new physics through the combination of the information from different ATLAS sub-detectors. The first ever ATLAS strong SUSY search exploiting this technique is also described, reporting the results and exclusion limits obtained using the complete proton-proton collision dataset recorded by the ATLAS experiment during the second Run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Dark matter is among the most important open problems in modern physics. Aimed at graduate students and researchers, this book describes the theoretical and experimental aspects of the dark matter problem in particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. Featuring contributions from 48 leading theorists and experimentalists, it presents many aspects, from astrophysical observations to particle physics candidates, and from the prospects for detection at colliders to direct and indirect searches. The book introduces observational evidence for dark matter along with a detailed discussion of the state-of-the-art of numerical simulations and alternative explanations in terms of modified gravity. It then moves on to the candidates arising from theories beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, and to the prospects for detection at accelerators. It concludes by looking at direct and indirect dark matter searches, and the prospects for detecting the particle nature of dark matter with astrophysical experiments.

This is an expanded version of the report by the Electroweak Symmetry Breaking and Beyond the Standard Model Working Group which was contributed to Particle Physics — Perspectives and Opportunities, a report of the Division of Particles and Fields Committee for Long Term Planning. One of the Working Group's primary goals was to study the phenomenology of electroweak symmetry breaking and attempt to quantify the “physics reach” of present and future colliders. Their investigations encompassed the Standard Model — with one doublet of Higgs scalars — and approaches to physics beyond the Standard Model. These include models of low-energy supersymmetry, dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking, and a variety of extensions of the Standard Model with new particles and interactions. The Working Group also considered signals of new physics in precision measurements arising from virtual processes and examined experimental issues associated with the study of electroweak symmetry breaking and the search for new physics at present and future hadron and lepton colliders.This volume represents an important contribution to the efforts being made to advance the frontiers of particle physics.

This volume contains contributions which are largely focused on strong coupling gauge theories and the search of theories beyond the standard model, as well as new aspects in hot and dense QCD — particularly in view of the LHC experiments and the lattice studies of conformal fixed point.It contains, among others, many of the latest and important reports on walking technicolor and related subjects in the general context of conformality, discussions of phenomenological implications with the LHC, as well as the theoretical ones through lattice studies. Nonperturbative studies like lattice simulations and stringy/holographic approaches are extensively elaborated in close relation to phenomenological studies. Also, heavy ion experiments at LHC are discussed in such nonperturbative approaches.