Search results

Ajuts: We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of MINECO, Spain and EPLANET, ERC, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, European Union. PIC (Spain). Funded by SCOAP3. ; This paper presents a new method of reconstructing the individual charged and neutral hadrons in tau decays with the ATLAS detector. The reconstructed hadrons are used to classify the decay mode and to calculate the visible four-momentum of reconstructed tau candidates, significantly improving the resolution with respect to the calibration in the existing tau reconstruction. The performance of the reconstruction algorithm is optimised and evaluated using simulation and validated using samples of Z→ττ and Z(→μμ)+jets events selected from proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy s√=8TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 fb−1.

Ajuts: We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of MINECO, Spain and EPLANET, ERC, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, European Union. Funded by SCOAP3 ; A search for singly produced vector-like Q quarks, where Q can be either a T quark with charge or a Y quark with charge , is performed in proton-proton collisions recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb and was produced with a centre-of-mass energy of TeV. This analysis targets decays where the W boson decays leptonically. A veto on massive large-radius jets is used to reject the dominant background. The reconstructed Q -candidate mass, ranging from 0.4 to 1.2 TeV, is used in the search to discriminate signal from background processes. No significant deviation from the Standard Model expectation is observed, and limits are set on the cross-section times branching ratio. The results are also interpreted as limits on the QWb coupling and the mixing with the Standard Model sector for a singlet T quark or a Y quark from a doublet. T quarks with masses below 0.95 TeV are excluded at 95 % confidence level, assuming a unit coupling and a BR, whereas the expected limit is 1.10 TeV.

Ajuts: We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of MINECO, Spain and EPLANET, ERC, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, European Union. Funded by SCOAP3. ; A search has been made for supersymmetry in a final state containing two photons and missing transverse momentum using the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The search makes use of of proton-proton collision data collected at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV in 2015. Using a combination of data-driven and Monte-Carlo-based approaches, the Standard Model background is estimated to be events. No events are observed in the signal region; considering the expected background and its uncertainty, this observation implies a model-independent 95 % CL upper limit of 0.93 fb (3.0 events) on the visible cross section due to physics beyond the Standard Model. In the context of a generalized model of gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking with a bino-like next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle, this leads to a lower limit of 1650 GeV on the mass of a degenerate octet of gluino states, independent of the mass of the lighter bino-like neutralino.

Ajuts: We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of MINECO, Spain and EPLANET, ERC, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, European Union. Funded by SCOAP3. ; The result of a search for pair production of the supersymmetric partner of the Standard Model bottom quark () is reported. The search uses 3.2 fb of pp collisions at TeV collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in 2015. Bottom squarks are searched for in events containing large missing transverse momentum and exactly two jets identified as originating from b -quarks. No excess above the expected Standard Model background yield is observed. Exclusion limits at 95 % confidence level on the mass of the bottom squark are derived in phenomenological supersymmetric R -parity-conserving models in which the is the lightest squark and is assumed to decay exclusively via , where is the lightest neutralino. The limits significantly extend previous results; bottom squark masses up to 800 (840) GeV are excluded for the mass below 360 (100) GeV whilst differences in mass above 100 GeV between the and the are excluded up to a mass of 500 GeV.

Ajuts: We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of MINECO, Spain and EPLANET, ERC, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, European Union. Funded by SCOAP3. ; The results of a search for gluinos in final states with an isolated electron or muon, multiple jets and large missing transverse momentum using proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of are presented. The dataset used was recorded in 2015 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb. Six signal selections are defined that best exploit the signal characteristics. The data agree with the Standard Model background expectation in all six signal selections, and the largest deviation is a 2.1 standard deviation excess. The results are interpreted in a simplified model where pair-produced gluinos decay via the lightest chargino to the lightest neutralino. In this model, gluinos are excluded up to masses of approximately 1.6 Te V depending on the mass spectrum of the simplified model, thus surpassing the limits of previous searches.

Ajuts: We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of MINECO, Spain and EPLANET, ERC, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, European Union. Funded by SCOAP3. ; A search for neutral Higgs bosons of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) and for a heavneutral boson is performed using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb from proton-proton collisions at recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The heavy resonance is assumed to decay to a pair with at least one lepton decaying to final states with hadrons and a neutrino. The search is performed in the mass range of 0.2-1.2 for the MSSM neutral Higgs bosons and 0.5-2.5 for the heavy neutral boson. The data are in good agreement with the background predicted by the Standard Model. The results are interpreted in MSSM and benchmark scenarios. The most stringent constraints on the MSSM - space exclude at 95 % confidence level (CL) for in the MSSM scenario. For the Sequential Standard Model, a mass up to 1.90 is excluded at 95 % CL and masses up to 1.82-2.17 are excluded for a of the strong flavour model.

Ajuts: We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of MINECO, Spain and EPLANET, ERC, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, European Union. Funded by SCOAP3. ; This paper presents a dedicated search for exotic decays of the Higgs boson to a pair of new spin-zero particles, H→aa, where the particle a decays to b-quarks and has a mass in the range of 20-60 GeV. The search is performed in events where the Higgs boson is produced in association with a W boson, giving rise to a signature of a lepton (electron or muon), missing transverse momentum, and multiple jets from b-quark decays. The analysis is based on the full dataset of pp collisions at s√=13TeV recorded in 2015 by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb −1. No significant excess of events above the Standard Model prediction is observed, and a 95% confidence-level upper limit is derived for the product of the production cross section for pp→WH times the branching ratio for the decay H→aa→4b. The upper limit ranges from 6.2 pb for an a-boson mass ma=20GeV to 1.5 pb for ma=60GeV.

Ajuts: We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of MINECO, Spain and EPLANET, ERC and NSRF, European Union. Funded by SCOAP3. ; Measurements of normalized differential cross-sections of top-quark pair production are presented as a function of the top-quark, system and event-level kinematic observables in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of . The observables have been chosen to emphasize the production process and to be sensitive to effects of initial- and final-state radiation, to the different parton distribution functions, and to non-resonant processes and higher-order corrections. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb, recorded in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Events are selected in the lepton+jets channel, requiring exactly one charged lepton and at least four jets with at least two of the jets tagged as originating from a b -quark. The measured spectra are corrected for detector effects and are compared to several Monte Carlo simulations. The results are in fair agreement with the predictions over a wide kinematic range. Nevertheless, most generators predict a harder top-quark transverse momentum distribution at high values than what is observed in the data. Predictions beyond NLO accuracy improve the agreement with data at high top-quark transverse momenta. Using the current settings and parton distribution functions, the rapidity distributions are not well modelled by any generator under consideration. However, the level of agreement is improved when more recent sets of parton distribution functions are used.

Ajuts: We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of MINECO, Spain and EPLANET, ERC and NSRF, European Union. Funded by SCOAP3. ; A search is presented for a high-mass Higgs boson in the , , , and decay modes using the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The search uses proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb. The results of the search are interpreted in the scenario of a heavy Higgs boson with a width that is small compared with the experimental mass resolution. The Higgs boson mass range considered extends up to for all four decay modes and down to as low as 140 , depending on the decay mode. No significant excess of events over the Standard Model prediction is found. A simultaneous fit to the four decay modes yields upper limits on the production cross-section of a heavy Higgs boson times the branching ratio to boson pairs. 95 % confidence level upper limits range from 0.53 pb at GeV to 0.008 pb at GeV for the gluon-fusion production mode and from 0.31 pb at GeV to 0.009 pb at GeV for the vector-boson-fusion production mode. The results are also interpreted in the context of Type-I and Type-II two-Higgs-doublet models.

Ajuts: We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of MINECO, Spain and EPLANET, ERC and NSRF, European Union. Funded by SCOAP3. ; Results of a search for new phenomena in events with at least three photons are reported. Data from proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb, were collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The observed data are well described by the Standard Model. Limits at the 95 % confidence level on new phenomena are presented based on the rate of events in an inclusive signal region and a restricted signal region targeting the rare decay , as well as di-photon and tri-photon resonance searches. For a Standard Model Higgs boson decaying to four photons via a pair of intermediate pseudoscalar particles (a), limits are found to be for 10 GeV 62 GeV. Limits are also presented for Higgs boson-like scalars (H) for 125 GeV, and for a decaying to three photons via . Additionally, the observed limit on the branching ratio of the Z boson decay to three photons is found to be BR, a result five times stronger than the previous result from LEP.

Ajuts: We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of MINECO, Spain and EPLANET, ERC, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, European Union. Funded by SCOAP3. ; This article presents the sensitivity of the ATLAS experiment to the lepton-flavour-violating decays of . A method utilising the production of leptons via decays is used. This method is applied to the sample of 20.3 fb of pp collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV collected by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC in 2012. No event is observed passing the selection criteria, and the observed (expected) upper limit on the lepton branching fraction into three muons, , is () at 90 % confidence level.

Ajuts: We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of MINECO, Spain and EPLANET, ERC, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Actions, European Union. Funded by SCOAP3. ; The number of charged particles inside jets is a widely used discriminant for identifying the quark or gluon nature of the initiating parton and is sensitive to both the perturbative and non-perturbative components of fragmentation. This paper presents a measurement of the average number of charged particles with inside high-momentum jets in dijet events using 20.3 fb of data recorded with the ATLAS detector in pp collisions at collisions at the LHC. The jets considered have transverse momenta from 50 up to and beyond 1.5 . The reconstructed charged-particle track multiplicity distribution is unfolded to remove distortions from detector effects and the resulting charged-particle multiplicity is compared to several models. Furthermore, quark and gluon jet fractions are used to extract the average charged-particle multiplicity for quark and gluon jets separately.

We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of MINECO, Spain and EPLANET, ERC, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, European Union. Funded by SCOAP3. ; This paper presents measurements of distributions of charged particles which are produced in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of and recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. A special dataset recorded in 2012 with a small number of interactions per beam crossing (below 0.004) and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 160 was used. A minimum-bias trigger was utilised to select a data sample of more than 9 million collision events. The multiplicity, pseudorapidity, and transverse momentum distributions of charged particles are shown in different regions of kinematics and charged-particle multiplicity, including measurements of final states at high multiplicity. The results are corrected for detector effects and are compared to the predictions of various Monte Carlo event generator models which simulate the full hadronic final state.

We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of MINECO, Spain and EPLANET, ERC, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, European Union. Funded by SCOAP3. ; The performance of the jet trigger for the ATLAS detector at the LHC during the 2011 data taking period is described. During 2011 the LHC provided proton-proton collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and heavy ion collisions with a 2.76 TeV per nucleon-nucleon collision energy. The ATLAS trigger is a three level system designed to reduce the rate of events from the 40 MHz nominal maximum bunch crossing rate to the approximate 400 Hz which can be written to offline storage. The ATLAS jet trigger is the primary means for the online selection of events containing jets. Events are accepted by the trigger if they contain one or more jets above some transverse energy threshold. During 2011 data taking the jet trigger was fully efficient for jets with transverse energy above 25 GeV for triggers seeded randomly at Level 1. For triggers which require a jet to be identified at each of the three trigger levels, full efficiency is reached for offline jets with transverse energy above 60 GeV. Jets reconstructed in the final trigger level and corresponding to offline jets with transverse energy greater than 60 GeV, are reconstructed with a resolution in transverse energy with respect to offline jets, of better than 4 % in the central region and better than 2.5 % in the forward direction.

Ajuts: We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of MINECO, Spain and EPLANET, ERC, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, European Union. Funded by SCOAP3. ; A search is performed for a heavy particle decaying into different flavour dilepton pairs (, or ), using 3.2 fb of proton-proton collision data at TeV collected in 2015 by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. No excess over the Standard Model prediction is observed. Limits at the 95 % credibility level are set on the mass of a boson with lepton-flavour-violating couplings at 3.0, 2.7 and 2.6 TeV, and on the mass of a supersymmetric sneutrino with R -parity-violating couplings at 2.3, 2.2 and 1.9 TeV, for , and final states, respectively. The results are also interpreted as limits on the threshold mass for quantum black hole production.