103 Search Results

A search for R-parity-conserving supersymmetry in events with large missing transverse momentum, jets and at least one hadronically decaying $$\tau$$-lepton is presented. Both gluino and squark pair production are considered, with the cascade decay of each gluino or squark producing either a $$\tau$$-slepton or a $$\tau$$-sneutrino. Three channels are examined, requiring either exactly one hadronically decaying $$\tau$$-lepton and no other leptons, exactly one hadronically decaying $$\tau$$-lepton and at least one other lepton, or two or more hadronically decaying $$\tau$$-leptons. Analyses in the three channels are optimised independently and combined statistically. Two separate analysis strategies, either a cut-and-count or machine-learning approach,more » are used. The search uses 140 and 51.8 of pp collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider during 2015–2018 at TeV and 2022–2023 at TeV, respectively. Gluino masses below 2.25 TeV and squark masses up to 1.7 TeV are excluded« less

Measurements of $$t\bar{t}\ell ^{+}\ell ^{-}$$ production in the region of high dilepton invariant mass with effective field theory (EFT) interpretations are presented. They are performed using final states with three isolated leptons (electrons or muons) and are based on $$\sqrt{s} = 13$$ TeV proton–proton collision data with an integrated luminosity of $$140\,\textrm{fb}^{-1}$$, recorded from 2015 to 2018 with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Measurements of the $$t\bar{t}\ell ^{+}\ell ^{-}$$ signal strength and cross-section upper-limits are performed inclusively in lepton flavour and separately for electrons and muons. The study also aims to probe anomalous four-fermion interactions including tomore » test for possible lepton flavor universality violation. No significant deviations from the Standard Model predictions are observed and the measurements are interpreted through the EFT formalism to provide new constraints on the relevant operators.« less

ATLAS, a general-purpose experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), makes use of a large internationally-distributed computing infrastructure, including over 10⁶ TB of managed data on disk and tape and almost one million simultaneously running CPU cores. Upgrades for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) will increase the required computing resources by a factor of 3–4 by the beginning of the 2030s, and by an order of magnitude before the conclusion of data taking at the beginning of the 2040s. These resources are spread over around 100 computing sites worldwide. Efforts are underway within the experiment to evaluate and mitigate various aspectsmore » of the environmental impact of the sites, with the additional long-term goal of making recommendations to the sites that will significantly reduce the total expected environmental impact in the HL-LHC era. These efforts take several forms: building awareness in the experiment community, adjusting aspects of the computing policy, and modifications of data center configurations, either in ways that take advantage of particular features of ATLAS workloads or in generic ways that reduce the environmental impact of the computing resources. This paper describes the ongoing investigations and approaches that have already provided useful and actionable outcomes.« less

A search for pair-production of vector-like leptons is presented, considering their decays into a third-generation Standard Model (SM) quark and a vector leptoquark (U₁) as predicted by an ultraviolet-complete extension of the SM, referred to as the ‘4321’ model. Given the assumed decay of U₁ into third-generation SM fermions, the final state can contain multiple τ-leptons and b-quarks. This search is based on a dataset of pp collisions at $$\sqrt{s}=13$$ TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of up to $$140~\textrm{fb}^{-1}$$. No significant excess above the SM backgroundmore » prediction is observed, and 95% confidence level limits on the cross-section times branching ratio are derived as a function of the vector-like lepton mass. A lower observed (expected) limit of 910 GeV (970 GeV) is set on the vector-like lepton mass. Additionally, the results are interpreted for a supersymmetric model with an R-parity violating coupling to the third-generation quarks and leptons. Lower observed (expected) limits are obtained on the higgsino mass at 880 GeV (940 GeV) and on the wino mass at 1170 GeV (1170 GeV).« less

A measurement of off-shell Higgs boson production is performed in the H* → WW channel. The measurement uses a proton–proton collision dataset with an integrated luminosity of 140 fb^-1 collected at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Final states in which both W bosons decay leptonically are targeted, and events are categorised based on the flavour of the final-state leptons, the jet multiplicity, and the output of neural network-based classifiers. The data are found to be compatible with the Standard Model expectation. An observed (expected) upper bound on the 95 %more » symmetric confidence level interval is set on the rate of off-shell Higgs boson production at a value of 3.4 (4.4) times the Standard Model prediction. These results are combined with the results from the measurement of on-shell Higgs boson production in the same final states to obtain an observed (expected) upper bound at 95 % confidence level on the Higgs boson total width of 13.1 (17.3) MeV.« less

The jet energy calibration and its uncertainties are derived from measurements of the calorimeter response to single particles in both data and Monte Carlo simulation using proton–proton collisions at $$\sqrt{s} = 13$$ TeV collected with the ATLAS detector during Run 2 at the Large Hadron Collider. The jet calibration uncertainty for anti-$$k_T$$ jets with a jet radius parameter of R$$_\textrm{jet} = 0.4$$ and in the central jet rapidity region is about 2.5% for transverse momenta ($$p_{\text {T}}$$) of 20 $$\text {GeV}$$ , about 0.5% for $$p_{\text {T}} = 300$$ GeV and 0.7% for $$p_{\text {T}} = 4$$ TeV . Excellentmore » agreement is found with earlier determinations obtained from -balance based in situ methods ($$Z/\gamma$$ +jets). The combination of these two independent methods results in the most precise jet energy measurement achieved so far with the ATLAS detector with a relative uncertainty of 0.3% at $$p_\textrm{T} = 300$$ GeV and 0.6% at 4 TeV. The jet energy calibration is also derived with the single-particle calorimeter response measurements separately for quark- and gluon-induced jets and furthermore for jets with R_jet varying from 0.2 to 1.0 retaining the correlations between these measurements. Differences between inclusive jets and jets from boosted top-quark decays, with and without grooming the soft jet constituents, are also studied.« less

This paper presents the reconstruction of missing transverse momentum ($$p_{\text {T}}^{\text {miss}}$$ ) in proton–proton collisions, at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. This is a challenging task involving many detector inputs, combining fully calibrated electrons, muons, photons, hadronically decaying $$\tau$$ -leptons, hadronic jets, and soft activity from remaining tracks. Possible double counting of momentum is avoided by applying a signal ambiguity resolution procedure which rejects detector inputs that have already been used. Several $$p_{\text {T}}^{\text {miss}}$$ ‘working points’ are defined with varying stringency of selections, the tightest improving the resolution at high pile-up by up to 39% compared tomore » the loosest. The $$p_{\text {T}}^{\text {miss}}$$ performance is evaluated using data and Monte Carlo simulation, with an emphasis on understanding the impact of pile-up, primarily using events consistent with leptonic Z decays. The studies use $$140~\text {fb}^{-1}$$ of data, collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider between 2015 and 2018. The results demonstrate that $$p_{\text {T}}^{\text {miss}}$$ reconstruction, and its associated significance, are well understood and reliably modelled by simulation. Finally, the systematic uncertainties on the soft $$p_{\text {T}}^{\text {miss}}$$ component are calculated. After various improvements the scale and resolution uncertainties are reduced by up to 76% and 51%, respectively, compared to the previous calculation at a lower luminosity.« less

The Lund jet plane (LJP) is measured for the first time in $$t\bar{t}$$ events, using 140 $$\textrm{fb}^{-1}$$ of $$\sqrt{s} = 13$$ TeV pp collision data collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The LJP is a two-dimensional observable of the sub-structure of hadronic jets that acts as a proxy for the kinematics of parton showers and hadron formation. The observable is constructed from charged particles and is measured for R = 1.0 anti-$$k_t$$ jets with transverse momentum above 350 GeV containing the full decay products of either a top quark or a daughter W boson. The other top quarkmore » in the event is identified from its decay into a b-quark, an electron or a muon and a neutrino. The measurement is corrected for detector effects and compared with a range of Monte Carlo predictions sensitive to different aspects of the hadronic decays of the heavy particles. In the W-boson-initiated jets, all the predictions are incompatible with the measurement. In the top quark initiated jets, disagreement with all predictions is observed in smaller subregions of the plane, and with a subset of the predictions across the fiducial plane. The measurement could be used to improve the tuning of Monte Carlo generators, for better modelling of hadronic decays of heavy quarks and bosons, or to improve the performance of jet taggers.« less

The ATLAS experiment has developed extensive software and distributed computing systems for Run 3 of the LHC. These systems are described in detail, including software infrastructure and workflows, distributed data and workload management, database infrastructure, and validation. The use of these systems to prepare the data for physics analysis and assess its quality are described, along with the software tools used for data analysis itself. An outlook for the development of these projects towards Run 4 is also provided.

A search for a light charged Higgs boson produced in decays of the top quark, $$t \rightarrow H^{\pm } b$$ with $$H^{\pm } \rightarrow cs$$, is presented. This search targets the production of top-quark pairs $$t\bar{t} \rightarrow WbH^{\pm } b$$, with $$W \rightarrow ℓv(ℓ = e, μ)$$, resulting in a lepton-plus-jets final state characterised by an isolated electron or muon and at least four jets. The search exploits b-quark and c-quark identification techniques as well as multivariate methods to suppress the dominant $$t\bar{t}$$ background. The data analysed correspond to 140 fb^-1 of $pp$ collisions at $$\sqrt{s}$$ = 13 TeV recordedmore » with the ATLAS detector at the LHC between 2015 and 2018. Observed (expected) 95% confidence-level upper limits on the branching fraction $$\mathscr{B}(t \rightarrow H^{\pm } b)$$, assuming $$\mathscr{B}(t \rightarrow Wb) + \mathscr{B}(t \rightarrow H^{\pm }(\rightarrow cs)b$$, are set between 0.066% (0.077%) and 3.6% (2.3%) for a charged Higgs boson with a mass between 60 and 168 GeV.« less