Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Search for chargino-neutralino production with mass splittings near the electroweak scale in three-lepton final states in √s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for supersymmetry through the pair production of electroweakinos with mass splittings near the electroweak scale and decaying via on-shell W and Z bosons is presented for a three-lepton final state. The analyzed proton-proton collision data taken at a center-of-mass energy of √s=13  TeV were collected between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139  fb−1. A search, emulating the recursive jigsaw reconstruction technique with easily reproducible laboratory-frame variables, is performed. The two excesses observed in the 2015–2016 data recursive jigsaw analysis in the low-mass three-lepton phase space are reproduced. Results with the full data set are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. They are interpreted to set exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on simplified models of chargino-neutralino pair production for masses up to 345 GeV

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente

Combination of the W boson polarization measurements in top quark decays using ATLAS and CMS data at root s=8 TeV

The combination of measurements of the W boson polarization in top quark decays performed by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations is presented. The measurements are based on proton-proton collision data produced at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV, and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 20 fb(-1)for each experiment. The measurements used events containing one lepton and having different jet multiplicities in the final state. The results are quoted as fractions of W bosons with longitudinal (F-0), left-handed (F-L), or right-handed (F-R) polarizations. The resulting combined measurements of the polarization fractions are F-0= 0.693 +/- 0.014 and F-L= 0.315 +/- 0.011. The fractionF(R)is calculated from the unitarity constraint to be F-R=-0.008 +/- 0.007. These results are in agreement with the standard model predictions at next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative quantum chromodynamics and represent an improvement in precision of 25 (29)% for F-0(F-L) with respect to the most precise single measurement. A limit on anomalous right-handed vector (V-R), and left- and right-handed tensor (g(L), g(R)) tWb couplings is set while fixing all others to their standard model values. The allowed regions are [-0.11,0.16] for V-R, [-0.08,0.05] for g(L), and [-0.04,0.02] for g(R), at 95% confidence level. Limits on the corresponding Wilson coefficients are also derived.Peer reviewe

Measurement of muon pairs produced via γγ scattering in nonultraperipheral Pb + Pb collisions at √sNN = 5.02 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a measurement of dimuon photoproduction in nonultraperipheral Pb + Pb collisions at √sNN = 5.02 TeV are presented. Themeasurement uses ATLAS data from the 2015 and 2018 Pb + Pb data-taking periods at the LHC with an integrated luminosity of 1.94 nb.1. The γγ → μ+ μ- pairs are identified via selections on pair momentum asymmetry and acoplanarity. Differential cross sections for dimuon production are measured in different centrality, average muon momentum, and pair rapidity intervals as functions of acoplanarity and k⊥, the transverse momentum kick of one muon relative to the other. Measurements are also made as a function of the rapidity separation of the muons and the angle of the muon pair relative to the second-order event plane to test whether magnetic fields generated in the quark-gluon plasma affect the measured muons. A prior observation of a centrality-dependent broadening of the acoplanarity distribution is confirmed. Furthermore, the improved precision of the measurement reveals a depletion in the number of pairs having small acoplanarity or k⊥ values in more central collisions. The acoplanarity distributions in a given centrality interval are observed to vary with the mean pT of the muons in the pair, but the k⊥ distributions do not. Comparisons with recent theoretical predictions are made. The predicted trends associated with effects of magnetic fields on the dimuons are not observed

Search for flavour-changing neutral-current couplings between the top quark and the photon with the ATLAS detector at s=13 TeV

This letter documents a search for flavour-changing neutral currents (FCNCs), which are strongly suppressed in the Standard Model, in events with a photon and a top quark with the ATLAS detector. The analysis uses data collected in pp collisions at s=13 TeV during Run 2 of the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1. Both FCNC top-quark production and decay are considered. The final state consists of a charged lepton, missing transverse momentum, a b-tagged jet, one high-momentum photon and possibly additional jets. A multiclass deep neural network is used to classify events either as signal in one of the two categories, FCNC production or decay, or as background. No significant excess of events over the background prediction is observed and 95% CL upper limits are placed on the strength of left- and right-handed FCNC interactions. The 95% CL bounds on the branching fractions for the FCNC top-quark decays, estimated (expected) from both top-quark production and decay, are B(t→uγ)<0.85(0.88−0.25+0.37)×10−5 and B(t→cγ)<4.2(3.40−0.95+1.35)×10−5 for a left-handed tqγ coupling, and B(t→uγ)<1.2(1.20−0.33+0.50)×10−5 and B(t→cγ)<4.5(3.70−1.03+1.47)×10−5 for a right-handed coupling

Performance of electron and photon triggers in ATLAS during LHC Run 2

Electron and photon triggers covering transverseenergies from 5 GeV to several TeV are essential for theATLAS experiment to record signals for a wide variety ofphysics: from Standard Model processes to searches for newphenomena in both proton–proton and heavy-ion collisions.To cope with a fourfold increase of peak LHC luminosityfrom 2015 to 2018 (Run 2), to 2.1×1034cm−2s−1, anda similar increase in the number of interactions per beam-crossing to about 60, trigger algorithms and selections wereoptimised to control the rates while retaining a high effi-ciency for physics analyses. For proton–proton collisions, thesingle-electron trigger efficiency relative to a single-electronoffline selection is at least 75% for an offline electron of31 GeV, and rises to 96% at 60 GeV; the trigger efficiency ofa 25 GeV leg of the primary diphoton trigger relative to a tightoffline photon selection is more than 96% for an offline pho-ton of 30 GeV. For heavy-ion collisions, the primary electronand photon trigger efficiencies relative to the correspondingstandard offline selections are at least 84% and 95%, respec-tively, at 5 GeV above the corresponding trigger threshold

Search for heavy particles decaying into a top-quark pair in the fully hadronic final state in pp collisions at √s=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search for new particles decaying into a pair of top quarks is performed using proton-proton collision data recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at a center-of-mass energy of √s=13  TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.1  fb−1. Events consistent with top-quark pair production and the fully hadronic decay mode of the top quarks are selected by requiring multiple high transverse momentum jets including those containing b-hadrons. Two analysis techniques, exploiting dedicated top-quark pair reconstruction in different kinematic regimes, are used to optimize the search sensitivity to new hypothetical particles over a wide mass range. The invariant mass distribution of the two reconstructed top-quark candidates is examined for resonant production of new particles with various spins and decay widths. No significant deviation from the Standard Model prediction is observed and limits are set on the production cross-section times branching fraction for new hypothetical Z′ bosons, dark-matter mediators, Kaluza-Klein gravitons and Kaluza-Klein gluons. By comparing with the predicted production cross sections, the Z′ boson in the topcolor-assisted-technicolor model is excluded for masses up to 3.1–3.6 TeV, the dark-matter mediators in a simplified framework are excluded in the mass ranges from 0.8 to 0.9 TeV and from 2.0 to 2.2 TeV, and the Kaluza-Klein gluon is excluded for masses up to 3.4 TeV, depending on the decay widths of the particles

Search for heavy charged long-lived particles in the ATLAS detector in 36.1 fb− 1 of proton-proton collision data at √s =13 TeV

A search for heavy charged long-lived particles is performed using a data sample of 36.1 fb−1 of proton-proton collisions at √s =13 TeV collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. The search is based on observables related to ionization energy loss and time of flight, which are sensitive to the velocity of heavy charged particles traveling significantly slower than the speed of light. Multiple search strategies for a wide range of lifetimes, corresponding to path lengths of a few meters, are defined as model independently as possible, by referencing several representative physics cases that yield long-lived particles within supersymmetric models, such as gluinos/squarks (R-hadrons), charginos and staus. No significant deviations from the expected Standard Model background are observed. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are provided on the production cross sections of long-lived R-hadrons as well as directly pair produced staus and charginos. These results translate into lower limits on the masses of long-lived gluino, sbottom and stop R-hadrons, as well as staus and charginos of 2000, 1250, 1340, 430, and 1090 GeV, respectively

Search for large missing transverse momentum in association with one top-quark in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper describes a search for events with one top-quark and large missing transverse momentum in the final state. Data collected during 2015 and 2016 by the ATLAS experiment from 13 TeV proton–proton collisions at the LHC corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.1 fb−1 are used. Two channels are considered, depending on the leptonic or the hadronic decays of the W boson from the top quark. The obtained results are interpreted in the context of simplified models for dark-matter production and for the single production of a vector-like T quark. In the absence of significant deviations from the Standard Model background expectation, 95% confidence-level upper limits on the corresponding production cross-sections are obtained and these limits are translated into constraints on the parameter space of the models considered