The first measurement of the ratio of the W and Z cross sections in association with a single jet, known as the R_{Jets} measurement, is presented. The measurement was performed using 33pb^-1 of integrated luminosity, recorded during the year 2010 by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. At this time the LHC was operating at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. The measurement is made as a function of the threshold on the jet transverse momentum, from 30 GeV up to a value of 200 GeV. The motivation for this measurement is outlined in terms of providing a stringent test of the Standard Model of particle physics, as well as a model independent tool for searching for new physics. Data driven tools are developed to perform the measurement and their performance is discussed. The result of the measurement is compared with the predictions of Next-to-Leading order perturbative QCD and found to be in good agreement over the entire range of transverse momenta considered.

An Interaction Point Collision Feedback System is necessary to achieve design luminosity at the future International Linear Collider (ILC). This is proposed to include a stripline beam position monitor (BPM) positioned 3 m from the Interaction Point (IP). The BPM is required to be able to measure the position of the outgoing electron or positron beam with a resolution of 1 m. Prototype feedback systems have been built and tested at the Next Linear Collider Test Accelerator (NLCTA) at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in the USA (SLAC) and also at the Accelerator Test Facility (ATF) at the High Energy Research Laboratory in Japan (KEK). The successful correction of position osets is demonstrated with the lowest latency achieved 24 ns, the best position resolution 4 m and the best correction ratio 23:1. To make the feedback system a more powerful tool, a digital processor is added. It raises the total latency of the feedback system to 140 ns. Its ability to perform algorithms is demonstrated with charge normalisation. Preliminary results indicate a resolution of 8 m and correction ratio 7:1. Backgrounds at the ILC comprise mainly electron-positron pairs from the beam-beam interaction. For the high luminosity 1TeV accelerator parameters, 105 pairs are produced per bunch crossing. This is the worst case for ILC pair backgrounds. These pairs produce 5 105 particle hits on a stripline of the IP feedback BPM. In two experiments at End Station A (ESA) at SLAC, a stripline BPM was exposed to secondary particle backgrounds to determine if the particle hits degraded the ability of the stripline BPM to resolve micron-level position osets. The experiments agree that the worst ILC pair backgrounds degrade the resolution by less than 8.5 nm (95% confidence level). It is concluded that micron-level resolution will not be aected by the ILC pair backgrounds. Studies of stripline signals caused by backgrounds led to the development of a GEANT3- based tool that could predict the signals. The prediction tool was tested against one of the experiments at ESA and used to predict the signals on the ILC feedback BPM striplines. The results confirm that the ILC pair backgrounds do not produce micron-level errors in position measurement, indicating that the degradation in resolution by the worst pair backgrounds expected was under 13 nm.

This thesis is an investigation into the current bounds on the trilinear R–parity–violating couplings in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model without R–parity conservation. The model is described, and its implications are discussed. Bounds on the couplings are obtained from leptonic and mesonic decay data, approximating mediating sfermions as much heavier than the decaying particles and assuming that only one set of couplings is non–zero for each decay. Those bounds from the purely leptonic decay data are compared to bounds from the LEP–II data, over a large range of sfermion masses. A potential signal of R–parity–violation at existing lepton colliders is calculated assuming that certain couplings are close to their bounds. The signal is found to be feasible and the backgrounds to the process are found to be negligible.

The switching on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in March 2010 and its successful operation thereafter has opened doors in the search for new physics beyond the Standard Model. Supersymmetry (SUSY) is one of the leading theories that extends the Standard Model of particle physics. A search for new SUSY particles is presented requiring large numbers of hadronic jets and missing transverse momentum. Novel background estimation techniques were developed specifically for this final state, allowing the control of the backgrounds where the missing transverse momentum is dominated by jet miss-measurement. Other backgrounds are estimated from Monte-Carlo simulations validated and normalised in dedicated control regions. No significant excess was observed in the search. Model independent upper limits on the number of signal events passing the selection are given and the results are also interpreted in two planes of the parameter space. This is the most recent and sensitive incarnation of several searches developed by the author in this channel.

The SNO+ experiment will use a liquid scintillator based detector to study solar, geo, and reactor neutrinos and double beta decay. This thesis discusses the effect of backgrounds on the measurement of neutrinoless double beta decay and describes analysis techniques developed to reduce their impact. Details of the modeling of the photomultiplier tubes in the SNO+ Monte Carlo RAT are first described and comparisons are made with the SNO Monte Carlo SNOMAN. SNOMAN has been extensively verified with calibration sources and RAT is shown to be in good agreement. The event reconstruction techniques are then presented and predict an achievable 15cm position and 7% energy resolution. The backgrounds are discussed and pileup backgrounds identified, including many previous unknown pileup backgrounds. Techniques to reject the pileup background are presented and shown to give over 99% rejection in the region of the double beta decay end point (3-4MeV), below the irreducible background from solar neutrinos. Finally the resulting limit on the effective Majorana neutrino mass SNO+ could achieve in 2015 is predicted to be 270meV and this is compared with other experiments that are underway.

MINOS is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. It consists of two large steel-scintillator tracking calorimeters. The near detector is situated at Fermilab, close to the production point of the NuMI muon-neutrino beam. The far detector is 735 km away, 716 m underground in the Soudan mine, Northern Minnesota. The primary purpose of the MINOS experiment is to make precise measurements of the "atmospheric" neutrino oscillation parameters (Δm²_atm and sin²2θ_atm). The oscillation signal consists of an energy-dependent deficit of v_μ interactions in the far detector. The near detector is used to characterize the properties of the beam before oscillations develop. The two-detector design allows many potential sources of systematic error in the far detector to be mitigated by the near detector observations. This thesis describes the details of the v_μ-disappearance analysis, and presents a new technique to estimate the hadronic energy of neutrino interactions. This estimator achieves a significant improvement in the energy resolution of the neutrino spectrum, and in the sensitivity of the neutrino oscillation fit. The systematic uncertainty on the hadronic energy scale was re-evaluated and found to be comparable to that of the energy estimator previously in use. The best-fit oscillation parameters of the v_μ-disappearance analysis, incorporating this new estimator were: Δm² = 2.32^+0.12_-0.08 x 10^-3eV² sin²2θ > 0.90 (90% C.L.). A similar analysis, using data from a period of running where the NuMI beam was operated in a configuration producing a predominantly V‾_μ beam, yielded somewhat different best-fit parameters Δ‾m² = (3.36^+0.46_-0.40 (stat.}) ± 0.06(syst.)) x 10^-3eV², sin²2‾θ =0.86^+0.11_-0.12(stat.) ± 0.01(syst.). The tension between these results is intriguing, and additional antineutrino data is currently being taken in order to further investigate this apparent discrepancy.

We present original calculations of standard model processes involving two weak bosons at NLO in QCD, and study related phenomenology with reference to Higgs boson and new physics searches at the LHC. We employ a new theoretical technique, D-dimensional generalised unitarity, to obtain the multi-particle, one-loop scattering amplitudes for the processes pp → W⁺W^- + 1j, pp → W⁺W^- + 2j, pp → W⁺W⁺ + 2j, and gg → W⁺W^-g. We consider the LHC phenomenology of: the W⁺W^- + n jets background to Higgs searches, for n = 0,1,2; the effects of anomalous tri-linear gauge couplings in WW and WZ production; the background W⁺W⁺ + 2j to new physics searches involving like-sign leptons; and a method of spin determination of new states in a scenario where conventional methods fail.

The observed constraints on the variability of the proton to electron mass ratio and the fine structure constant are used to establish constraints on the variability of the Quantum Chromodynamic Scale and a combination of the Higgs Vacuum Expectation Value and the Yukawa couplings. Further model dependent assumptions provide constraints on the Higgs VEV and the Yukawa couplings separately. A primary conclusion is that limits on the variability of dimensionless fundamental constants such as and provide important constraints on the parameter space of new physics and cosmologies.

It is likely that the early Universe was pervaded by a whole host of scalar fields which are ubiquitous in particle physics models and are employed everywhere from driving periods of accelerated expansion to the spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetries. Just as these scalar fields are important from a particle physics point of view, they can also have serious implications for the evolution of the Universe. In particular in extreme cases their dynamical evolution can lead to the failure of the synthesis of light elements or to exceed the dark matter bound in contrast to observation. These scalar fields are not however isolated systems and interact with the degrees of freedom which comprise their environment. As such two interrelated effects may arise; fluctuations and dissipation. These effects, which are enhanced at finite temperature, give rise to energy transfer between the scalar field and its environment and as such should be taken into account for a complete description of their dynamical evolution. In this thesis we will look at these effects within the inflationary era in a scenario termed warm inflation where amongst other effects, thermal fluctuations can now act as a source of primordial density perturbations. In particular we will show how a model of warm inflation based on a simple quartic potential can be brought back into agreement with Planck data through renormalizable interactions, whilst it is strongly disfavoured in the absence of such effects. Moving beyond inflation, we will consider the effect of fluctuation-dissipation dynamics on other cosmological scalar fields, deriving dissipation coefficients within common particle physics models. We also investigate how dissipation can affect cosmological phase transitions, potentially leading to late time periods of accelerated expansion, as well as presenting a novel model of dissipative leptogenesis.

An angular analysis of B⁰d → K⁰(→K⁺π⁻)μ⁺μ⁻ is presented using 20.3 fb⁻¹ of pp collision data collected at √s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment. The angular observables FL and S₃,₄,₅,₇,₈ were extracted in six bins of q², the invariant mass squared of the dimuon system, within the full range 0.04 < q² < 6.00 (GeV/c²)². The observables were determined from an unbinned maximum likelihood fit using four folded parameterisations of the full angular distribution. The fit results were used to obtain corresponding values for the optimised observables P₁ and P'₄,₅,₆,₈. The results presented are compatible with Standard Model predictions.