Expected Performance of the ATLAS Experiment - Detector, Trigger and Physics

A detailed study is presented of the expected performance of the ATLAS detector. The reconstruction of tracks, leptons, photons, missing energy and jets is investigated, together with the performance of b-tagging and the trigger. The physics potential for a variety of interesting physics processes, within the Standard Model and beyond, is examined. The study comprises a series of notes based on simulations of the detector and physics processes, with particular emphasis given to the data expected from the first years of operation of the LHC at CERN

Tools for estimating fake/non-prompt lepton backgrounds with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

International audienceMeasurements and searches performed with the ATLAS detector at the CERN LHC often involve signatures with one or more prompt leptons. Such analysesare subject to `fake/non-prompt' lepton backgrounds, where either a hadron or a lepton from a hadron decay or an electron from a photon conversion satisfies the prompt-leptonselection criteria. These backgrounds often arise within a hadronic jet because of particle decays in the showering process, particle misidentification or particleinteractions with the detector material. As it is challenging to model these processes with high accuracy in simulation, their estimation typically uses data-driven methods.Three methods for carrying out this estimation are described, along with their implementation in ATLAS and their performance

Fast b-tagging at the high-level trigger of the ATLAS experiment in LHC Run 3

The ATLAS experiment relies on real-time hadronic jet reconstruction and b-tagging to record fully hadronic events containing b-jets. These algorithms require track reconstruction, which is computationally expensive and could overwhelm the high-level-trigger farm, even at the reduced event rate that passes the ATLAS first stage hardware-based trigger. In LHC Run 3, ATLAS has mitigated these computational demands by introducing a fast neural-network-based b-tagger, which acts as a low-precision filter using input from hadronic jets and tracks. It runs after a hardware trigger and before the remaining high-level-trigger reconstruction. This design relies on the negligible cost of neural-network inference as compared to track reconstruction, and the cost reduction from limiting tracking to specific regions of the detector. In the case of Standard Model HH → bb̅bb̅, a key signature relying on b-jet triggers, the filter lowers the input rate to the remaining high-level trigger by a factor of five at the small cost of reducing the overall signal efficiency by roughly 2%

Search for exclusive Higgs and Z boson decays to ωγ and Higgs boson decays to K ⁎ γ with the ATLAS detector

Searches for the exclusive decays of the Higgs boson to an ω meson and a photon or a K⁎ meson and a photon can probe flavour-conserving and flavour-violating Higgs boson couplings to light quarks, respectively. Searches for these decays, along with the analogous Z boson decay to an ω meson and a photon, are performed with a pp collision data sample corresponding to integrated luminosities of up to 134 fb−1 collected at √s=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The obtained 95% confidence-level upper limits on the respective branching fractions are B(H→ωγ)<5.5×10−4, B(H→K⁎γ)<2.2×10−4 and B(Z→ωγ)<3.9×10−6. The limits for H→ωγ and Z→ωγ are 370 times and 140 times the Standard Model expected values, respectively. The result for Z→ωγ corresponds to a two-orders-of-magnitude improvement over the limit obtained by the DELPHI experiment at LEP

Measurement of the jet mass in high transverse momentum Z ( → b b ‾ ) γ production at s = 13 TeV using the ATLAS detector

The integrated fiducial cross-section and unfolded differential jet mass spectrum of high transverse momentum decays are measured in Zγ events in proton–proton collisions at . The data analysed were collected between 2015 and 2016 with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider and correspond to an integrated luminosity of . Photons are required to have a transverse momentum . The decay is reconstructed using a jet with , found with the anti- jet algorithm, and groomed to remove soft and wide-angle radiation and to mitigate contributions from the underlying event and additional proton–proton collisions. Two different but related measurements are performed using two jet grooming definitions for reconstructing the decay: trimming and soft drop. These algorithms differ in their experimental and phenomenological implications regarding jet mass reconstruction and theoretical precision. To identify Z bosons, b-tagged track-jets matched to the groomed large-R calorimeter jet are used as a proxy for the b-quarks. The signal yield is determined from fits of the data-driven background templates to the different jet mass distributions for the two grooming methods. Integrated fiducial cross-sections and unfolded jet mass spectra for each grooming method are compared with leading-order theoretical predictions. The results are found to be in good agreement with Standard Model expectations within the current statistical and systematic uncertainties

A search for the dimuon decay of the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector

A search for the dimuon decay of the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson is performed using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of collected with the ATLAS detector in Run 2 pp collisions at TeV at the Large Hadron Collider. The observed (expected) significance over the background-only hypothesis for a Higgs boson with a mass of 125.09 GeV is 2.0σ (1.7σ). The observed upper limit on the cross section times branching ratio for is 2.2 times the SM prediction at 95% confidence level, while the expected limit on a signal assuming the absence (presence) of a SM signal is 1.1 (2.0). The best-fit value of the signal strength parameter, defined as the ratio of the observed signal yield to the one expected in the SM, is