Abstract: Combined ATLAS and CMS measurements of the Higgs boson production and decay rates, as well as constraints on its couplings to vector bosons and fermions, are presented. The combination is based on the analysis of five production processes, namely gluon fusion, vector boson fusion, and associated production with a W or a Z boson or a pair of top quarks, and of the six decay modes H -> ZZ, W W , gamma gamma, tau tau, bb, and μmu. All results are reported assuming a value of 125.09 GeV for the Higgs boson mass, the result of the combined measurement by the ATLAS and CMS experiments. The analysis uses the CERN LHC proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS and CMS experiments in 2011 and 2012, corresponding to integrated luminosities per experiment of approximately 5 fb(-1) at root s = 7 TeV and 20 fb(-1) at root s = 8 TeV. The Higgs boson production and decay rates measured by the two experiments are combined within the context of three generic parameterisations: two based on cross sections and branching fractions, and one on ratios of coupling modifiers. Several interpretations of the measurements with more model-dependent parameterisations are also given. The combined signal yield relative to the Standard Model prediction is measured to be 1.09 +/- 0.11. The combined measurements lead to observed significances for the vector boson fusion production process and for the H -> tau tau decay of 5.4 and 5.5 standard deviations, respectively. The data are consistent with the Standard Model predictions for all parameterisations considered.

Abstract: A measurement of the t-channel single-top-quark and single-top-antiquark production cross-sections in the lepton+jets channel is presented, using 3.2 fb(-1) of proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2015. Events are selected by requiring one charged lepton (electron or muon), missing transverse momentum, and two jets with high transverse momentum, exactly one of which is required to be b-tagged. Using a binned maximum-likelihood fit to the discriminant distribution of a neural network, the cross-sections are determined to be sigma(tq) = 156 +/- 5 (stat.) +/- 27 (syst.) +/- 3 (lumi.) pb for single top-quark production and sigma((t) over barq) = 91 +/- 4 (stat.) +/- 18 (syst.) +/- 2 (lumi.) pb for single top-antiquark production, assuming a top-quark mass of 172.5 GeV. The cross-section ratio is measured to be R-t = sigma(tq) / sigma((t) over barq) = 1.72 +/- 0.09 (stat.) +/- 0.18 (syst.). All results are in agreement with Standard Model predictions.

Abstract: This paper presents a summary of beam-induced backgrounds observed in the ATLAS detector and discusses methods to tag and remove background contaminated events in data. Trigger-rate based monitoring of beam-related backgrounds is presented. The correlations of backgrounds with machine conditions, such as residual pressure in the beam-pipe, are discussed. Results from dedicated beam-background simulations are shown, and their qualitative agreement with data is evaluated. Data taken during the passage of unpaired, i.e. non-colliding, proton bunches is used to obtain background-enriched data samples. These are used to identify characteristic features of beam-induced backgrounds, which then are exploited to develop dedicated background tagging tools. These tools, based on observables in the Pixel detector, the muon spectrometer and the calorimeters, are described in detail and their efficiencies are evaluated. Finally an example of an application of these techniques to a monojet analysis is given, which demonstrates the importance of such event cleaning techniques for some new physics searches.