The NJL model is a classic model of chiral symmetry breaking in QCD and the gauged NJL model underlies many BSM models. I investigate how to apply Witten's double trace prescription in holographic models of quarks to describe NJL interactions. A holographic realisation of NJL and gauged NJL is realised and can be applied to understanding QCD and extended technicolor models.

The D3/D7 system provides a simple holographic description of a strongly coupled gauge theory with quarks. By introducing a range of deformations of the AdS5 space a variety of familair phenomena in gauge theory can be investigated quantitatively. These include a running gauge coupling, temperature, chemical potential, and magnetic fields leading to confinement and chiral symmetry breaking, as well as bound mesons and their melting. I'll illustrate these phenomena with examples and derive the phase diagram of a chiral symmetry breaking theory. Finally I shall discuss how hadronization can be modelled in such set ups and propose that rho meson emission should be described by a simple EM radiation problem.

The Large Hadron Collider is just beginning it's work as the highest energy proton proton collider ever made. After a brief introduction to the machine I will concentrate on it's main goal - the search for the Higgs boson. The Higgs is the missing particle from the Standard Model of particle physics which makes the model well behaved at high energy and generates particle mass. Something has to be there to do the job of the Higgs but there are hints of flaws in the simplest model that have led to many suggestions for new physics from particle compositeness to extra space-time dimensions.

We review AdS/CFT Correspondence constructions of non-supersymmetric theories and include quarks using D7 brane probes. Such geometries provide a geometric decription of chiral symmetry breaking in the pattern of QCD. The meson masses of the theory can be computed and include a pion-like goldstone boson. Phenomenological models of QCD in this spirit surprisingly work at the 10-15 percent level. Finally we address a major concern with such models - they have strongly coupled UV physics. We use ideas from perfect lattice actions to suggest a solution and show a toy example of the method in action.

TBA