Search for heavy resonances, and resonant diboson production with the ATLAS detector

Heavy resonances decaying into a pair of fundamental particles such as $jj$, $\ell^+\ell^-$, $\gamma\gamma$, and $\ell\nu$, are among the most common features to search for phenomena beyond the standard model (SM). Electroweak boson pair production, such as $WW$ or $ZZ$ with subsequent decays to $\ell\nu\ell'\nu'$ and $\ell\ell jj$ respectively, is a powerful test of the spontaneously broken gauge symmetry of the SM and can be also used to search for phenomena beyond the SM. There is a wide spectrum of theoretical models predicting these kinds of resonant signatures. This note covers several searches for these new phenomena conducted within ATLAS in 2011 and 2012 for the LHC 7 and 8 TeV center of mass energies respectively. No significant deviations from the SM have been observed and therefore, limits are set on the characteristic parameters of several new physics models. These benchmark models include new heavy $Z'/W'$ gauge bosons, chiral excitation of the SM weak gauge bosons, $Z^*/W^*$ Randal-Sundrum and ADD gravitons, Composite models for quarks, e.g. $q^*$ with substructure scale $\Lambda$, Quantum black holes, TeV$^{-1}$ Kaluza-Klein excitation of $\gamma/Z$ and more

A derivation of the electric field inside MAPS detectors from beam-test data and limited TCAD simulations

Solid semiconductor sensors are used as detectors in high-energy physics experiments, in medical applications, in space missions and elsewhere. A precise knowledge of the electric field inside the basic cells of these sensors is highly important for their characterization and performance understanding. The field governs the charge propagation processes and ultimately determines the size and quality of the electronic signal of the cell. Hence, the simulation of these sensors relies strongly on the electric field knowledge. For a certain voltage applied to the cell, the field depends on the specifics of the device's growth and fabrication. The information about these is often commercially protected or otherwise very difficult to encode in state-of-the-art technology computer-aided-design (TCAD) software. It is therefore practically impossible to obtain the field without some minimal knowledge. In this work, we show that combining public beam-test data and a very limited public TCAD-based knowledge, we are able to effectively reconstruct the 3D electric field function in the pixel cell of one important and widely used example, namely the ALPIDE sensor, a monolithic active pixel sensor (MAPS). Despite its broad usage worldwide, the ALPIDE field is not available to the community as it is under proprietary restriction. We provide the 3D effective field function of the ALPIDE sensor and comment on the process by which it is derived with the help of the Allpix$^2$ software. We also comment on how starting from the same grounds, similar work can be performed for other devices.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

Cumulative Polarization Coexisting with Conductivity at Interfacial Ferroelectrics

Ferroelectricity in atomically thin bilayer structures has been recently predicted1 and measured[2-4] in two-dimensional (2D) materials with hexagonal non-centrosymmetric unit-cells. Interestingly, the crystal symmetry translates lateral shifts between parallel 2D layers to a change of sign in their out-of-plane electric polarization, a mechanism referred to as "Slide-Tronics"[4]. These observations, however, have been restricted to switching between only two polarization states under low charge carrier densities[5-12], strongly limiting the practical application of the revealed phenomena[13]. To overcome these issues, one needs to explore the nature of the polarization that arises in multi-layered van der Waals (vdW) stacks, how it is governed by intra- and inter-layer charge redistribution, and to which extent it survives the introduction of mobile charge carriers, all of which are presently unknown14. To explore these questions, we conduct surface potential measurements of parallel WSe2 and MoS2 multi-layers with aligned and anti-aligned configurations of the polar interfaces. We find evenly spaced, nearly decoupled potential steps, indicating highly confined interfacial electric fields, which provide means to design multi-state "ladder ferroelectrics". Furthermore, we find that the internal polarization remains significant upon electrostatic doping of a mobile charge carrier density as high as 1013 cm-2, with substantial in-plane conductivity. Using first-principles calculations based on density functional theory (DFT), we trace the extra charge redistribution in real and momentum space and identify an eventual doping-induced depolarization mechanism

A search for heavy Kaluza-Klein electroweak gauge bosons at the LHC

The feasibility for the observation of a certain leptonic Kaluza-Klein (KK) hard process in {\em pp} interactions at the LHC is presented. Within the $S^1/Z_2$ TeV$^{-1}$ extra dimensional theoretical framework with the focus on the KK excitations of the Standard Model $\gamma$ and $Z^0$ gauge bosons, the hard-process, $f\bar f \to \sum_n\left(\gamma^*/Z^*\right)_n \to F \bar F$, has been used where $f$ is the initial state parton, $F$ the final state lepton and $\left(\gamma^*/Z^*\right)_{n}$ is the $n^{\rm th}$ KK excitation of the $\gamma/Z^0$ boson. For this study the analytic form for the hard process cross section has been independently calculated by the authors and has been implemented using the {\sc Moses} framework. The Moses framework itself, that has been written by the authors, was used as an external process within the {\sc Pythia} Monte Carlo generator which provides the phase space generation for the final state leptons and partons from the initial state hadrons, and the simulation of initial and final state radiation and hadronization. A brief discussion of the possibility for observing and identifying the unique signature of the KK signal given the current LHC program is also presented.Comment: 16 pages 10 figures, MCnet number: MCnet/10/06, Accepted by JHE

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