Measurements of charged-particle distributions with the ATLAS detector

Inclusive charged-particle measurements probe the low-energy region of the non-perturbative quantum chromodynamics. The ATLAS collaboration has recently measured the charged-particle multiplicity and its dependence on transverse momentum and pseudorapidity in special data sets with low LHC beam currents, recorded at centre-of-mass energies of 8 TeV and 13 TeV. The measurements at 8 TeV cover a wide spectrum using charged-particle selections with minimum transverse momentum of both 100 MeV and 500 MeV and in various phase space regions of low and high charged-particle multiplicities, some of which are studied for the first time by ATLAS. The measurements at 13 TeV also present detailed studies with a minimum transverse momentum of both 100 MeV and 500 MeV. The measurements are compared with predictions of various tuned Monte Carlo generators and are found to provide strong constraints on these. None of the Monte Carlo generators with their respective tunes are able to reproduce all the features of the data.Comment: Proceedings of Low-x Meeting 201

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements