Abstract: Leptons with essentially the same properties apart from their mass are grouped into three families (or flavours). The number of leptons of each flavour is conserved in interactions, but this is not imposed by fundamental principles. Since the formulation of the standard model of particle physics, the observation of flavour oscillations among neutrinos has shown that lepton flavour is not conserved in neutrino weak interactions. So far, there has been no experimental evidence that this also occurs in interactions between charged leptons. Such an observation would be a sign of undiscovered particles or a yet unknown type of interaction. Here the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN reports a constraint on lepton-flavour-violating effects in weak interactions, searching for Z-boson decays into a tau lepton and another lepton of different flavour with opposite electric charge. The branching fractions for these decays are measured to be less than 8.1 x 10(-6) (e tau) and 9.5 x 10(-6) (mu tau) at the 95% confidence level using 139 fb(-1) of proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of root s = 13 TeV and 20.3 fb(-1) at root s = 8 TeV. These results supersede the limits from the Large Electron-Positron Collider experiments conducted more than two decades ago.

Abstract: Jet quenching is the process of color-charged partons losing energy via interactions with quark-gluon plasma droplets created in heavy-ion collisions. The collective expansion of such droplets is well described by viscous hydrodynamics. Similar evidence of collectivity is consistently observed in smaller collision systems, including pp and p+ Pb collisions. In contrast, while jet quenching is observed in Pb + Pb collisions, no evidence has been found in these small systems to date, raising fundamental questions about the nature of the system created in these collisions. The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider has measured the yield of charged hadrons correlated with reconstructed jets in 0.36 nb-1 of p+ Pb and 3.6 pb-1 of pp collisions at 5.02 TeV. The yields of charged hadrons with p(T)(ch) > 0.5 GeV near and opposite in azimuth to jets with p(t)(je) T > 30 or 60 GeV, and the ratios of these yields between p+ Pb and pp collisions, IpPb, are reported. The collision centrality of p+ Pb events is categorized by the energy deposited by forward neutrons from the struck nucleus. The IpPb values are consistent with unity within a few percent for hadrons with p(T )(ch)> 4 GeV at all centralities. These data provide new, strong constraints that preclude almost any parton energy loss in central p+ Pb collisions.

Abstract: Inclusive and differential measurements of the top-antitop ( t (t) over bar) charge asymmetry A(C)(t (t) over bar) and the leptonic asymmetry A(C)(l (l) over bar) are presented in proton-proton collisions at root s = 13 TeV recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The measurement uses the complete Run 2 dataset, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb(-1), combines data in the single-lepton and dilepton channels, and employs reconstruction techniques adapted to both the resolved and boosted topologies. A Bayesian unfolding procedure is performed to correct for detector resolution and acceptance effects. The combined inclusive t (t) over bar charge asymmetry is measured to be A(C)(t (t) over bar) = 0.0068 +/- 0.0015, which differs from zero by 4.7 standard deviations. Differential measurements are performed as a function of the invariant mass, transverse momentum and longitudinal boost of the t (t) over bar system. Both the inclusive and differential measurements are found to be compatible with the Standard Model predictions, at next-to-next-to-leading order in quantum chromodynamics perturbation theory with next-to-leading-order electroweak corrections. The measurements are interpreted in the framework of the Standard Model effective field theory, placing competitive bounds on several Wilson coefficients.

Abstract: Inclusive and differential cross-sections for the production of top quarks in association with a photon are measured with proton-proton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb(-1). The data were collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC during Run 2 between 2015 and 2018 at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The measurements are performed in a fiducial volume defined at parton level. Events with exactly one photon, one electron and one muon of opposite sign, and at least two jets, of which at least one is b-tagged, are selected. The fiducial cross-section is measured to be 39.6-2.3+2.7 fb. Differential cross-sections as functions of several observables are compared with state-of-the-art Monte Carlo simulations and next-to-leading-order theoretical calculations. These include cross-sections as functions of photon kinematic variables, angular variables related to the photon and the leptons, and angular separations between the two leptons in the event. All measurements are in agreement with the predictions from the Standard Model.

Abstract: In a special run of the LHC with beta star=2.5 km, proton-proton elastic-scattering events were recorded at root s=13 TeV with an integrated luminosity of 340 μb(-1) using the ALFA subdetector of ATLAS in 2016. The elastic cross section was measured differentially in the Mandelstam t variable in the range from -t=2.5 center dot 10(-4) GeV2 to -t=0.46 GeV2 using 6.9 million elastic-scattering candidates. This paper presents measurements of the total cross section sigma(tot), parameters of the nuclear slope, and the rho-parameter defined as the ratio of the real part to the imaginary part of the elastic-scattering amplitude in the limit t -> 0. These parameters are determined from a fit to the differential elastic cross section using the optical theorem and different parameterizations of the t-dependence. The results for sigma(tot) and rho are sigma(tot) (PP -> X ) =104.7 +/- 1.1 mob , rho=0.098 +/- 0.011. The uncertainty in sigma(tot) is dominated by the luminosity measurement, and in rho by imperfect knowledge of the detector alignment and by modelling of the nuclear amplitude.