Abstract: This Letter presents a measurement of gamma gamma -> mu(+)mu(-)- production in Pb + Pb collisions recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at root s(NN) = 5.02 TeV with an integrated luminosity of 0.49 nb(-1). The azimuthal angle and transverse momentum correlations between the muons are measured as a function of collision centrality. The muon pairs are produced from gamma gamma through the interaction of the large electromagnetic fields of the nuclei. The contribution from background sources of muon pairs is removed using a template fit method. In peripheral collisions, the muons exhibit a strong back-to-back correlation consistent with previous measurements of muon pair production in ultraperipheral collisions. The angular correlations are observed to broaden significantly in central collisions. The modifications arc qualitatively consistent with rescattering of the muons while passing through the hot matter produced in the collision.

Abstract: This letter documents a search for flavour-changing neutral currents (FCNCs), which are strongly sup-pressed in the Standard Model, in events with a photon and a top quark with the ATLAS detector. The analysis uses data collected in pp collisions at & RADIC;s =13 TeV during Run 2 of the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb-1. Both FCNC top-quark production and decay are considered. The final state consists of a charged lepton, missing transverse momentum, a b-tagged jet, one high-momentum photon and possibly additional jets. A multiclass deep neural network is used to classify events either as signal in one of the two categories, FCNC production or decay, or as background. No significant ex-cess of events over the background prediction is observed and 95% CL upper limits are placed on the strength of left-and right-handed FCNC interactions. The 95% CL bounds on the branching fractions for the FCNC top-quark decays, estimated (expected) from both top-quark production and decay, are B(t & RARR; u & gamma; ) < 0.85 (0.88+0.37 -0.25) x 10-5 and B(t & RARR; c & gamma; ) < 4.2 (3.40+1.35-0.95) x 10-5 for a left-handed tq & gamma; cou-pling, and B(t & RARR; u & gamma; ) < 1.2 (1.20+0.50 -0.33) x10-5 and B(t & RARR; c & gamma; ) < 4.5 (3.70+1.47 -1.03) x10-5 for a right-handed coupling.

Abstract: This Letter describes the measurement of elliptic flow of charged particles in lead-lead collisions at root s(NN) = 2.76 TeV using the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The results are based on an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 μb(-1). Elliptic flow is measured over a wide region in pseudorapidity, vertical bar eta vertical bar < 2.5, and over a broad range in transverse momentum, 0.5 < p(T) < 20 GeV. The elliptic flow parameter nu(2) is obtained by correlating individual tracks with the event plane measured using energy deposited in the forward calorimeters. As a function of transverse momentum, nu(2)(p(T)) reaches a maximum at p(T) of about 3 GeV. then decreases and becomes weakly dependent on p(T) above 7-8 GeV. Over the measured pseudorapidity region, nu(2) is found to be only weakly dependent on eta, with less variation than observed at lower beam energies. The results are discussed in the context of previous measurements at lower collision energies, as well as recent results from the LHC.

Abstract: This article presents the results of two studies of Higgs boson properties using the WW*(-> e nu μnu)jj final state, based on a dataset corresponding to 36.1fb(-1) of root s = 13 TeV proton-proton collisions recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. The first study targets Higgs boson production via gluon-gluon fusion and constrains the CP properties of the effective Higgs-gluon interaction. Using angular distributions and the overall rate, a value of tan (alpha) = 0.0 +/- 0.4(stat.) +/- 0.3(syst.) is obtained for the tangent of the mixing angle for CP-even and CP-odd contributions. The second study exploits the vector-boson fusion production mechanism to probe the Higgs boson couplings to longitudinally and transversely polarised W and Z bosons in both the production and the decay of the Higgs boson; these couplings have not been directly constrained previously. The polarisation-dependent coupling-strength scale factors are defined as the ratios of the measured polarisation-dependent coupling strengths to those predicted by the Standard Model, and are determined using rate and kinematic information to be a(L) = 0.91(-0.18)(+0.10)(stat.)(-0.17)(+0.09)(syst.) and a(T) = 1.2 +/- 0.4(stat.)(-0.3)(+0.2)(syst.). These coupling strengths are translated into pseudo-observables, resulting in kappa(VV) = 0.91(-0.18)(+0.10)(stat.)(-0.17)(+0.09)(syst.) and epsilon(VV) = 0.13(-0.20)(+0.28)(stat.)(-0.10)(+0.08)(syst.). All results are consistent with the Standard Model predictions.

Abstract: This article presents a search for new resonances decaying into a Z or W boson and a 125 GeV Higgs boson h, and it targets the v (v) over barb (b) over bar, l(+)l(-) b (b) over bar, or l(+/-) vb (b) over bar final states, where l – e or mu, in proton-proton collisions at root s – 13 TeV. The data used correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 139 fb(-1) collected by the ATLAS detector during Run 2 of the LHC at CERN. The search is conducted by examining the reconstructed invariant or transverse mass distributions of Zh or Wh candidates for evidence of a localised excess in the mass range from 220 GeV to 5TeV. No significant excess is observed and 95% confidence-level upper limits between 1.3 pb and 0.3 fb are placed on the production cross section times branching fraction of neutral and charged spin-1 resonances and CP-odd scalar bosons. These limits are converted into constraints on the parameter space of the Heavy Vector Triplet model and the two-Higgs-doublet model.