Physics for Particle Detectors and Particle Detectors for Physics: Timing Performance of Semiconductor Detectors with Internal Gain and Constraints on High-Scale Interactions of the Higgs Boson

Experimental particle physics is a science of many scales. A large number of physical processes spanning energies from meV to TeV must be understood for modern collider experiments to be designed, built, and conducted successfully. This thesis contributes to the understanding of phenomena across this entire dynamic range. The first half of this document studies aspects of low-energy physics that govern the operation of particle detectors, limit their performance, and guide the development o...