For more than 30 years the
Standard Model has been the theoretical foundation for
particle physics. The theory has been verified
successfully by experimental tests. Its biggest
shortcoming is the non-discovery of the Higgs
boson,responsible for giving the other particles masses.
Despite its success there are hints that the Standard
Model is not the complete theory and many extensions of
it, such as supersymmetry, have been proposed.
Extended theories often
predict the existence of a charged Higgs boson and its
detection will be a clear sign of physics beyond the
Standard Model. The main focus in this thesis is on
various phenomenological aspects of the charged Higgs
boson. For favorable mass and couplings direct detection
is shown to be possible at the Large Hadron Collider in
production with an associated W boson.
It is also shown how a light charged Higgs can have
measurable effects on spin correlations in decays of
pair-produced top quarks. The charged Higgs boson can
also be seen indirectly, in for example B-meson
decays, which can be used to put constraints on its mass
and fermion couplings. Exclusion limits in two
supersymmetric models are given together with a
comparison with the discovery potentials for the LHC
experiments. A tool for calculating properties, such as
masses and decays, of both charged and neutral Higgs
bosons in the Two-Higgs-Doublet Model is also presented.
B-meson decays can
also be used to test aspects of the strong interaction.
Part of this thesis deals with improving and applying
phenomenological models to B-meson
decays. Although these models are not derived from first
principles, their success shows that they capture
important features of non-perturbative strong
interactions.