Measurements of Higgs bosons decaying to bottom quarks from vector boson fusion production with the ATLAS experiment at √=13TeV

The paper presents a measurement of the Standard Model Higgs Boson decaying to b-quark pairs in the vector boson fusion (VBF) production mode. A sample corresponding to 126 fb−1 of s√=13TeV proton–proton collision data, collected with the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, is analyzed utilizing an adversarial neural network for event classification. The signal strength, defined as the ratio of the measured signal yield to that predicted by the Standard Model for VBF Higgs production, is measured to be 0.95+0.38−0.36 , corresponding to an observed (expected) significance of 2.6 (2.8) standard deviations from the background only hypothesis. The results are additionally combined with an analysis of Higgs bosons decaying to b-quarks, produced via VBF in association with a photon

The ATLAS inner detector trigger performance in pp collisions at 13 TeV during LHC Run 2

The design and performance of the inner detector trigger for the high level trigger of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider during the 2016-2018 data taking period is discussed. In 2016, 2017, and 2018 the ATLAS detector recorded 35.6 fb(-1), 46.9 fb(-1), and 60.6 fb(-1) respectively of proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 13TeV. In order to deal with the very high interaction multiplicities per bunch crossing expected with the 13TeV collisions the inner detector trigger was redesigned during the long shutdown of the Large Hadron Collider from 2013 until 2015. An overview of these developments is provided and the performance of the tracking in the trigger for the muon, electron, tau and b-jet signatures is discussed. The high performance of the inner detector trigger with these extreme interaction multiplicities demonstrates how the inner detector tracking continues to lie at the heart of the trigger performance and is essential in enabling the ATLAS physics programme

Search for excited electrons singly produced in proton–proton collisions at \sqrt{s} = 13 TeV with the ALAS experiment at the LHC

A search for excited electrons produced in pp collisions at s√ = 13 TeV via a contact interaction qq¯→ee∗ is presented. The search uses 36.1 fb −1 of data collected in 2015 and 2016 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Decays of the excited electron into an electron and a pair of quarks ( eqq¯ ) are targeted in final states with two electrons and two hadronic jets, and decays via a gauge interaction into a neutrino and a W boson ( νW ) are probed in final states with an electron, missing transverse momentum, and a large-radius jet consistent with a hadronically decaying W boson. No significant excess is observed over the expected backgrounds. Upper limits are calculated for the pp→ee∗→eeqq¯ and pp→ee∗→eνW production cross sections as a function of the excited electron mass me∗ at 95% confidence level. The limits are translated into lower bounds on the compositeness scale parameter Λ of the model as a function of me∗ . For me∗<0.5 TeV , the lower bound for Λ is 11 TeV . In the special case of me∗=Λ , the values of me∗<4.8 TeV are excluded. The presented limits on Λ are more stringent than those obtained in previous searches

Life cycle assessment applied to recycled aggregate concrete

The role of the concrete industry in the growth of modern society and economy is indisputable, as is its contribution to the degradation of the environment. The construction sector has great relevance in the growth of the European economic and social activities. Despite the effects of the 200708 economic crisis, the construction sector contributes to around 9% of the gross domestic product and provides 18 million direct jobs in around three million enterprises in the European Union (EBC, 2017). However, the construction industry is not an environmentally friendly activity. Indeed, it is a major contributor in the degradation of the environment (Bossink and Brouwers, 1996). Negative impacts that have been cited include: land depletion and deterioration, energy consumption, solid waste generation, dust and gas emission, noise pollution and consumption of nonrenewable natural resources (Ofori, 1992). The European construction industry exhausts more than 50% of European natural resources (Schultmann et al., 2010), is responsible for 40% of the total European energy consumption (Zabalza Bribia´n et al., 2009) and generates 34% of the waste produced annually (Eurostat, 2018). Since the first alarm in the 1970s, the reconciliation of economic development with the preservation of the environment has become a major global challenge. Ofthe many environmental impacts of development, those caused by the construction industry have triggered considerable public and governmental concerns that have led to research ways to consume less energy and natural resources and generate less waste. Environmental protection has become an issue of global importance. Within the sustainable measures adopted by the construction industry, the construction and demolition waste (CDW) management and its recycling as secondary aggregates for concrete manufacturing has been studied as a possible way to reduce the environmental pressure on natural resources and to decrease waste generation. Despite the New Trends in Eco-efficient and Recycled Concrete. numerous methods for the evaluation of the environmental impacts, a life cycle assessment (LCA) is one of the most widely employed techniques due to its proficiency to calculate the potential effects that a product, process or service has on the environment over the entire period of its life cycle. This chapter focuses on the particularities of the ecological profile of concrete with recycled aggregates from CDW as assessed using LCA