Hard diffraction in proton collisions, where the initial state proton emerges from the interaction rather undisturbed despite a hard interaction scale, has been studied for a few decades. First observed in proton-proton collisions, the phenomenon is seen as well in deep inelastic electron-proton scattering (DIS) as a leading final state proton and a rapidity gap-region without final state particles. Although a rather successful description in terms of the exchange of a hadronic color singlet pomeron with a parameterized gluon content exists, it is still an open question whether a theoretically more well-founded description can be obtained based on quantum chromodynamics. The soft color interaction model (SCI) attempts this through additional gluon exchanges at momentum scales below the conventional scale of perturbative QCD and the hadronization scale. Such gluons can lead to an effective color singlet exchange and therefore to diffraction. This thesis explores the phenomenology of the SCI model in diffractive W and photon+jet production. For diffractive deep inelastic scattering, a dynamic color screening model is developed based on a summed amplitude for soft gluon exchanges. The studies of the model within Monte Carlo event simulation show that the additional dynamics improve the description of electron-positron scattering data from HERA. Dijet events in proton-proton collisions with an upper limit on the energy flow between the jets is sensitive to large angle gluon emissions. This thesis applies a resummation method which takes into account also secondary emissions to describe this observable and shows that a good description of data from ATLAS can be achieved. Supersymmetric extensions to the Standard Model provide a possible explanation for dark matter in the universe. The next-to-minimal supersymmetric extension (NMSSM) can contain a dark matter candidate in form of the lightest neutralino with a substantial singlino component. This thesis studies the prospects for indirect detection of dark matter for such viable NMSSM model points via the observation of neutrinos from neutralino annihilation in the sun with IceCube and the future extension PINGU. It is shown that with a few years of data taking large parts of the parameter space can be excluded or a discovery be made.

The Standard Model of particle physics describes all known elementary particles and their interactions. Despite its great experimental success, we know that the Standard Model is not a complete description of Nature and therefore new phenomena should be observed at higher energies. In the coming years the Large Hadron Collider will test the Standard Model by colliding protons with center of mass energies of up to 14 TeV providing some of the most stringent tests on the Standard Model. Experimental searches for Dark Matter provide a complementary program to test physics at the weak scale. In the near future new experimental data coming from direct detection experiments, and from satellites and telescopes will drastically improve our sensitivity to weak scale dark matter. This could lead to the first direct observation of dark matter, and thus of physics beyond the Standard Model. In this thesis I propose different extensions of the Standard Model and discuss their experimental consequences. I first discuss models for Axigluons, which are spin one particles in the adjoint representation of the SU(3) color gauge group. These models were motivated by the measurement of higher than predicted forward-backward asymmetry in top quark pair production at the Tevatron. I study different scenarios for Axigluon models that can explain the Tevatron result and explore their signatures at the Large Hadron Collider. Second I discuss the implications of ultraviolet scale invariance for the Standard Model, which has been advocated as a solution to the hierarchy problem. I show that in order to solve the hierarchy problem with scale invariance, new physics is required not far from the weak scale. In the last part of this thesis I propose a new model for dark matter, in which dark matter is charged under a hidden non-Abelian gauge group. This leads to modifications in the sensitivity of the usual experimental searches for dark matter in addition to distinct signatures in the Cosmic Microwave Background and in Large Scale Structure data.

This thesis investigates the possibility that the gauge boson in a certain hypothetical SU(2) gauged sector can constitute all the non-baryonic dark matter. The gauge bosons acquire mass from the Higgs mechanism as in the Standard Model and scatter elastically among themselves non-gravitationally. It is expected that this self interaction of the dark gauge bosons would resolve the various discrepancies between the ΛCDM model and astrophysical observations on small (e.g. galactic or galaxy cluster) scales. Parameter space within the domain of validity of perturbation theory satisfying the constraints of dark matter abundance, the elastic self-scattering momentum transfer cross-section suggested by recent astrophysical observations, and consideration of the Big-Bang nucleosynthesis was found to be non-empty in the “forbidden” regime where the mass of the dark Higgs boson is greater than the mass of the dark gauge boson. / Graduate

Malgré le succès incontestable du Modèle Standard de la physique des particules, il est vraisemblable qu'il ne soit qu'une partie de la théorie complète de physique des particules -- comme c'est le cas des hypothèses de théories unifiées -- et ainsi de nombreux efforts ont été dédiés au développement de théorie de Nouvelle Physique. La Supersymmétrie est l'une des extensions les plus populaires puisque qu'elle permet non seulement de résoudre le problème de Naturalité mais présente aussi une candidat viable de matière sombre. Ce dernier point a été particulièrement mis en avant avec les récentes mesures expérimentales qui ont permis d'affiner significativement notre connaissance des propriétés de cette matière sombre. En particulier, la détermination de la densité relique de matière sombre dans l'univers est à présent réalisée avec une précision de l'ordre du pourcent. Dans le cadre du Modèle Standard Supersymmétrique Minimal (le MSSM), cette contrainte permet ainsi de tester la structure à une boucle de la théorie. Cependant c'est aussi un modèle présentant un très grand nombre de paramètres, comparé au Modèle Standard, et le calcul complet des observables à une boucle reste trop long pour être effectué sur l'ensemble de l'espace des paramètres. Dans cette thèse, je me suis ainsi intéressé à la possibilité de reproduire ces corrections à la boucle par un ensemble de couplages effectifs. L'approche effective présentant l'avantage de garder la simplicité d'un calcul effectué à l'arbre tout en conservant une trace des effets caractéristiques de boucles comme le non-découplage de certaines particules lourdes. Le LHC (Large Hadron Collider), dont les opérations ont démarrées juste après le début de ma thèse, soit à l'automne 2009, a fourni des données complémentaires aux observables de matière sombre. En effet le secteur du Higgs du MSSM est très peu flexible, ce qui a pour effet d'introduire ce que l'on appelle le problème du ``fine-tuning'', c'est à dire la nécessité d'avoir des valeurs très précises pour les paramètres. Afin d'y remédier, de nombreux modèles ont été créés au delà du MSSM, comme le NMSSM (en anglais Next-to-MSSM). Dans le but de suivre une approche plus générale, j'ai décidé au cours de cette thèse d'utiliser à nouveau l'approche effective, mais dans un but différent : alors que les couplages effectifs utilisés dans le cas de la matière sombre sont choisi pour reproduire le plus fidèlement possible les corrections à la boucle des particules du MSSM, les opérateurs effectifs que nous ajoutons au secteur du Higgs sont les effets à basse énergie (c'est à dire l'énergie de production du Higgs) d'une nouvelle physique à haute énergie. Bien que dédiées à deux buts différents, ces deux implémentations d'une même technique montrent bien ses différents atouts. Dans un des cas (celui du Higgs) les opérateurs effectifs permettent de paramétrer l'effet d'une physique ultraviolette inconnue, alors que dans l'autre cas cette physique ultraviolette se réduit au simple MSSM. / Despite the numerous successes of the Standard Model of particle physics, it is believed that the complete picture of particle physics could be larger, as a unified theory for instance, and thus many efforts have been devoted to the development of theories of new physics. Supersymmetry is one of the most popular extensions since in addition to a solution of the naturalness issue, it provides a viable dark matter candidate. This last sector being all the more important now that recent experimental measurements have significantly increased our knowledge about dark matter properties, in particular the experimental determination of the relic density has reached the accuracy of a few percent. When applied to the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (the MSSM, which is the simplest supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model), this constraint will thus shed light on the one-loop structure of the model. The MSSM is however much more liberal with unconstrained parameters than the Standard Model is, and the full one-loop computation of the relic density tends to be too long to be carried out throughout this large parameter space. In this thesis I have thus explored the opportunity of accounting for those loop corrections through a set of effective couplings. This effective approach has the advantage of keeping the simplicity of a tree-level computation but encoding at the same time genuine loop features such as the non-decoupling of heavy particles. Complementary to those constraints are the observables related to the LHC, which started taking data shortly after the beginning of my PhD in fall 2009. The Higgs sector of the MSSM is tightly constrained and this results in a certain fine-tuning of the model, which led to the creation of many models beyond the MSSM (such as the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model). Arguing for a more general approach, I have decided in this thesis to use again the effective approach but with a different aim : while the effective couplings in the case of dark matter are determined to account for the MSSM loop corrections, the effective operators we add to the Higgs sector of the MSSM are the remnants of the integration of a heavy extra spectrum. This effective approach, called the BMSSM (for Beyond the MSSM) is known to account for many different realisations of non-minimal supersymmetry, and we have used it as a framework to recast the results of the Higgs analyses carried out by ATLAS and CMS collaborations. This study has led to the caracterisation of the rich phenomenology of the Higgs sector in the BMSSM, with in particular the possibility for a signal quite different from Standard Model or MSSM expectations. Though based on distinct aims, the two implementations of the effective approach show the different advantages of an effective field theory. In the first case the effective operators are parametrising the effect of an unknown UV completion, whereas in the second we assume this UV completion to be the MSSM.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:24:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2010-02-26Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:51:38Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 otalorapatino_g_me_ift.pdf: 425269 bytes, checksum: 54b8759a6432f649d63ed61ba3345593 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Na última década várias observações indicam que o universo está expandindo aceleradamente. Essa expansão acelerada pode ser explicada em um universo composto de 70% de energia escura e 30% de matéria (25% de matéria escura e 5% de matéria bariônica). A energia escura proporciona a pressão negativa necessária para produzir a aceleração em grandes escalas. Nesse trabalho faz-se uma revisão do modelo de um campo escalar como fonte da energia escura, conhecido genericamente como modelo de quintessência. Estuda-se o modelo de quintessência acoplada à matéria escura / In the previous decade many observations indicate that the universe is accelerating. This rapid expansion can be explained in an universe made up of 70% of dark energy and 30% of matter (25% of dark matter and 5% of baryonic matter). The dark energy provides negative pressure to produce acceleration. In this work it is studied the model of Quintessence, a model of scalar field, as source of the dark energy. It is studied the model of Coupled Quintessence with dark matter

Neste trabalho discutimos um modelo baseado em teoria de campos para descrever a energia escura, no qual ela é representada por uma partícula ultra-leve situada em um mínimo metaestável de um potencial. Mostramos que a energia escura neste modelo decai em matéria escura durante o tempo de vida do universo, amenizando o problema da coincidência. / In the present work we discuss a field theory model in which dark energy is described by ultra-light particle situated at a metastable minimum of a potential. We show that dark energy in this model decays into dark matter during a time scale corresponding to the age of the universe, alleviating the coincidence problem.

Nesta tese, estudamos cosmologias com criação de matéria como alternativa ao modelo $\\Lambda$CDM. Generalizamos a equação de Boltzmann relativística com um termo de produção de partículas fenomenológico, de tal forma que a equação resultante seja capaz de reobter os resultados da termodinâmica de não-equilíbrio das equações de balanço e evolução de temperatura. Após obter o termo correto para a equação generalizada de Boltzmann, investigamos como o formalismo proposto altera a equação de evolução de relíquias cósmicas na presença de criação gravitacional de partículas. / In this thesis, we study matter creation cosmologies as an alternative to the $\\Lambda$CDM model. We generalize the relativistic Boltzmann equation with a phenomenological particle production term, in such a way that the resulting equation will be able to reproduce the non-equilibrium thermodynamics results of the balance equations and temperature evolution law. After obtaining the correct term to the generalized Boltzmann equation, we investigate how the proposed formalism changes the cosmic relic evolution equation in the presence of gravitational particle creation.

Neste trabalho, estudamos modelos cosmológicos em que a energia escura foi tratada como um campo de matéria que interage com a matéria escura. Três modelos distintos foram considerados. O primeiro trata tanto a matéria escura fria quanto a energia escura como fluidos perfeitos. O termo de interação entre eles é dado por uma expressão com origem fenomenológica que postulamos existir na equação de balanço entre esses dois fluidos. Dadas as equações no universo plano de Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW), pudemos escrever uma versão covariante para as equações de balanço. Com isso, as equações de balanço em um universo de FRW perturbado linearmente foram obtidas. Isso, por sua vez, permitiu que a estabilidade das equações diferenciais obtidas fosse estudada. O segundo modelo tem origem em modelos de f(R). Esses modelos propõem uma generalização da Relatividade Geral ao considerar a ação da gravidade como um funcional do escalar de Ricci, R. Através de uma transformação conforme, foi possível reinterpretar os modelos de f(R) como modelos em que um campo escalar canônico, que representa a energia escura, interage com os campos da matéria. Através do princípio da ação, obtivemos as equações de movimento e o tensor de energia-momento para nosso sistema. Com o campo escalar sendo interpretado como um fluido perfeito, pudemos, por fim, obter equações de balanço entre fluidos perfeitos tanto no nível de fundo quanto no universo perturbado linearmente. O terceiro modelo começa com a lagrangiana, em um espaço-tempo de FRW, de um campo escalar canônico, que representa a energia escura, e um campo fermiônico de spin-1/2, que representa a matéria escura. Um termo de interação de Yukawa entre esses campos foi postulado existir na lagrangiana. Novamente através do princípio da ação, obtivemos as equações de movimento e o tensor de energia-momento para esses campos. Essas equações de movimento puderam, por fim, ser reescritas como equações de balanço entre fluidos perfeitos tanto no nível de fundo quanto no universo perturbado linearmente. / In this work we studied cosmological models in which the dark energy was treated as a field of matter that interacts with dark matter. Three different models were considered. The first one treats both the cold dark matter and the dark energy as perfect fluids. The interaction term between them is given by a expression with phenomenological origin that we postulated to exist in the balance equations between these two fluids. Given the equations in the flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) universe, we wrote a covariant version of the balance equations. Thus, the balance equations in a linearly perturbed FRW universe were obtained. This, in turn, allowed the stability of the obtained differential equations to be studied. The second model comes from f(R) models. These models propose a generalization of General Relativity by considering the action for gravity as a functional of the Ricci scalar, R. Through a conformal transformation, it was possible to reinterpret the f(R) models as models in which a canonical scalar field, which represents the dark energy, interacts with matter fields. Through the principle of least action, we obtained the equations of motion and the energy-momentum tensor for our system. With the scalar field being interpreted as a perfect fluid, we obtained equations of balance for perfect fluids at both the background level and in the linearly perturbed universe. The third model starts with the Lagrangian, in a FRW space-time, of a canonical scalar field, which represents the dark energy, and of a fermionic field of spin-1/2, which represents the dark matter. A Yukawa interaction term between these fields was postulated to exist in the Lagrangian. Again, through the principle of least action, we obtained the equations of motion and the energy-momentum tensor for these fields. These equations of motion could then be rewritten as balance equations for perfect fluids at both the background level and in the linearly perturbed universe.

In this thesis we go beyond the standard cosmological LCDM model and study the effect of an interaction between dark matter and dark energy. Although the LCDM model provides good agreement with observations, it faces severe challenges from a theoretical point of view. In order to solve such problems, we first consider an alternative model where both dark matter and dark energy are described by fluids with a phenomenological interaction given by a combination of their energy densities. In addition to this model, we propose a more realistic one based on a Lagrangian density with a Yukawa-type interaction. To constrain the cosmological parameters we use recent cosmological data, the CMB measurements made by the Planck satellite, as well as BAO, SNIa, H0 and Lookback time measurements. / Nesta tese vamos além do modelo cosmológico padrão, o LCDM, e estudamos o efeito de uma interação entre a matéria e a energia escuras. Embora o modelo LCDM esteja de acordo com as observações, ele sofre sérios problemas teóricos. Com o objetivo de resolver tais problemas, nós primeiro consideramos um modelo alternativo, onde ambas, a matéria e a energia escuras, são descritas por fluidos com uma interação fenomenológica dada como uma combinação das densidades de energia. Além desse modelo, propomos um modelo mais realista baseado em uma densidade Lagrangiana com uma interação tipo Yukawa. Para vincular os parâmetros cosmológicos usamos dados cosmológicos recentes como as medidas da CMB feitas pelo satélite Planck, bem como medidas de BAO, SNIa, H0 e Lookback time.

We determine the mass scale of Planck galaxy clusters using gravitational lensing mass measurements from the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH). We have compared the lensing masses to the Planck Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) mass proxy for 21 clusters in common, employing a Bayesian analysis to simultaneously fit an idealized CLASH selection function and the distribution between the measured observables and true cluster mass. We used a tiered analysis strategy to explicitly demonstrate the importance of priors on weak lensing mass accuracy. In the case of an assumed constant bias, b(SZ), between true cluster mass, M-500, and the Planck mass proxy, M-PL, our analysis constrains 1 - b(SZ) = 0.73 +/- 0.10 when moderate priors on weak lensing accuracy are used, including a zero-mean Gaussian with standard deviation of 8% to account for possible bias in lensing mass estimations. Our analysis explicitly accounts for possible selection bias effects in this calibration sourced by the CLASH selection function. Our constraint on the cluster mass scale is consistent with recent results from the Weighing the Giants program and the Canadian Cluster Comparison Project. It is also consistent, at 1.34 sigma, with the value needed to reconcile the Planck SZ cluster counts with Planck's base Lambda CDM model fit to the primary cosmic microwave background anisotropies.