Contribution to the energy and time measurement of electrons and photons in the ATLAS experiment and search for dark matter production in association to a Higgs boson.

The discovery of a particle consistent with a Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations has opened up new possibilities in searches for physics beyond the SM (BSM). Searches for dark matter in ATLAS focus on a special case of general models called, mono-X, that predict a single object X (jet, photon, W or Z bosons) produced in association to dark matter (DM) particles. The production of these final states depends on the coupling between the radiated object and the colliding particles. This fact motivates the search of mono-Higgs signals since Higgs does not couple to gluons and its couplings to light quarks are very weak. Then, the Standard Model does not predict a large contribution to these mono-Higgs final states, thus any deviation from SM predictions is a direct probe of a coupling between the Higgs and a new BSM sector. A search of DM particles produced in association to a Higgs boson decaying into two photons has been carried out in this thesis. Aiming to increase the significance of discovery in this channel, studies on the cross-talk effect has been performed to improve photon identification in ATLAS. Besides, DM particles are not expected to interact within the detector fiducial volume, thus predicted signatures include a large missing transverse momentum. Performance studies of the reconstruction of this missing momentum have been put in place in topologies containing a Higgs boson decaying into two photons. No significant excess has been found and 95 % confidence level limits are set on the observed signal. Additionally, the results are interpreted in terms of 90 % confidence-level limits on the spin-independent dark matter-nucleon cross-section as a function of the dark matter particle mass.