In this diploma thesis, we present a thorough investigation of the Vavilov-Cerenkov (VC) effect and its application to the detection of ultrahigh energyneutrinos. Neutrinos have no net charge and cannot emit VC radiation(VCR) but when they interact with a stationary medium such radiation isproduced by the Askar'yan effect. It has been proposed to use the lunarregolith as a detector material for such neutrino interactions, but in orderto do so, the VCR emitted from neutrino interactions has to be filtered outfrom that of other energetic particles impinging upon and penetrating intothe lunar surface. Since the principal difference between these emissions isdependent on the depth at which they occur, any boundary effects dependenton the distance from the point of emission to the surface is of interest.Therefore we examine the behavior of VCR near dielectric boundaries withextra care, both analytically and numerically. In order to keep the physicalpicture as clear as possible the analytical derivations are conducted in thetemporal domain. The boundary problem is studied both with respect tothe Maxwell boundary conditions and the method of images. In order toverify the analytic results and to make further investigations, a numericalMaxwell solver for the general VCR problem was constructed. The analyticand numeric results are then compared and proven to be equivalent. TheMaxwell solver is used to study the boundary problem and it is shown thatthe VCR emitted in a medium near the surface does not depend on the distanceto the surface in the same way as the opposite problem with a chargeabove the medium. In the case of a charge distribution traveling partiallyon both sides of the boundary some frequency dependent effects are shown.

The Standard Model of particle physics successfully describes present collider data. Nevertheless, theoretical and cosmological results call for its extension. A softly broken supersymmetric completion around the TeV scale solves several of the outstanding issues. Supersymmetry requires two Higgs doublets, leading to five physical Higgs states. These include a pair of charged Higgs bosons H±, which are a generic feature of theories with multiple Higgs doublets. Using results from high-energy colliders and flavour physics, constraints are derived on the charged Higgs boson mass and couplings; both for constrained scenarios in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) with grand unification, and for general two-Higgs-doublet models. The MSSM results are compared to the projected reach for charged Higgs searches at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). At the LHC, a light charged Higgs is accessible through top quark decay. Beyond a discovery, it is demonstrated how angular distributions sensitive to top quark spin correlations can be used to determine the structure of the H±tb coupling. The public code 2HDMC, which performs calculations in a general, CP-conserving, two-Higgs-doublet model, is introduced. In parallel to the developments at colliders, the most energetic particles ever recorded are the ultra-high-energy (UHE) cosmic rays. To gain more insight into their origin, new experiments are searching for UHE neutrinos. These searches require detectors of vast volume, which can be achieved by searching for coherent radio pulses arising from the Askaryan effect. The prospects of using a satellite orbiting the Moon to search for neutrino interactions are investigated, and a similar study for an Earth-based radio telescope is presented. In both cases, the method is found competitive for detection of the very highest energy neutrinos considered.