Abstract: This Letter presents the results of a direct search with the ATLAS detector at the LHC for a Standard Model Higgs boson of mass 110 <= m(H) <= 130 GeV produced in association with a W or Z boson and decaying to b (b) over bar. Three decay channels are considered: ZH -> l(+)l(-)b (b) over bar, WH -> lvbb (b) over bar and ZH -> v (v) over bar(b) over bar where l corresponds to an electron or a muon. No evidence for Higgs boson production is observed in a dataset of 7 TeV pp collisions corresponding to 4.7 fb(-1) of integrated luminosity collected by ATLAS in 2011. Exclusion limits on Higgs boson production, at the 95% confidence level, of 2.5 to 5.5 times the Standard Model cross section are obtained in the mass range 110-130 GeV. The expected exclusion limits range between 2.5 and 4.9 for the same mass interval.

Abstract: This Letter presents the first study of Higgs boson production in association with a vector boson (V = W or Z) in the fully hadronic qqbb final state using data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC in ffiffiproton-proton collisions at root root s= 13 TeV and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137fb(-1). The vector bosons and Higgs bosons are each reconstructed as large-radius jets and tagged using jet substructure techniques. Dedicated tagging algorithms exploiting b-tagging properties are used to identify jets consistent with Higgs bosons decaying into b (b) over bar. Dominant backgrounds from multijet production are determined directly from the data, and a likelihood fit to the jet mass distribution of Higgs boson candidates is used to extract the number of signal events. The VH production cross section is measured inclusively and differentially in several ranges of Higgs boson transverse momentum: 250-450, 450-650, and greater than 650 GeV. The inclusive signal yield relative to the standard model expectation is observed to be μ= 1.4(-0.9)(+1.0) and the corresponding cross section is 3.1 +/- 1.3(stat)(-1.4)(+1.8) (syst) pb.

Abstract: This Letter presents the first search for a heavy particle decaying into an e(+/-)mu(-/+) final state in root s = 7 TeV pp collisions at the LHC. The data were recorded by the ATLAS detector during 2010 and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 35 pb(-1). No excess above the standard model background expectation is observed. Exclusions at 95% confidence level are placed on two representative models. In an R-parity violating supersymmetric model, tau sneutrinos with a mass below 0.75 TeV are excluded, assuming all R-parity violating couplings are zero except lambda(311)' = 0.11 and lambda(312) = 0.07. In a lepton flavor violating model, a Z'-like vector boson with masses of 0.70-1.00 TeV and corresponding cross sections times branching ratios of 0.175-0.183 pb is excluded. These results extend to higher mass R-parity violating sneutrinos and lepton flavor violating Z's than previous constraints from the Tevatron.

Abstract: This Letter presents measurements of the differential cross-sections for inclusive electron and muon production in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of root s = 7 TeV, using data collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The muon cross-section is measured as a function of p(T) in the range 4 < p(T) < 100 GeV and within pseudorapidity vertical bar eta vertical bar < 2.5. In addition the electron and muon cross-sections are measured in the range 7 < p(T) < 26 GeV and within vertical bar eta vertical bar < 2.0, excluding 1.37 < vertical bar eta vertical bar < 1.52. Integrated luminosities of 1.3 pb(-1) and 1.4 pb(-1) are used for the electron and muon measurements, respectively. After subtraction of the W/Z/gamma* contribution, the differential cross-sections are found to be in good agreement with theoretical predictions for heavy-flavour production obtained from Fixed Order NLO calculations with NLL high-p(T) resummation, and to be sensitive to the effects of NLL resummation.

Abstract: This Letter presents evidence for the associated production of a W boson and a top quark using 2.05 fb(-1) of pp collision data at root s = 7 TeV accumulated with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The analysis is based on the selection of the dileptonic final states with events featuring two isolated leptons, electron or muon, with significant transverse missing momentum and at least one jet. An approach based on boosted decision trees has been developed to improve the discrimination of single top-quark Wt events from background. A template fit to the final classifier distributions is performed to determine the cross-section. The result is incompatible with the background-only hypothesis at the 3.3 sigma level, the expected sensitivity assuming the Standard Model production rate being 3.4 sigma. The corresponding cross-section is determined and found to be sigma(wt) = 16.8 +/- 2.9 (stat) +/- 4.9 (syst) pb, in good agreement with the Standard Model expectation. From this result the CKM matrix element vertical bar V-tb vertical bar = 1.03(-0.19)(+0.16) is derived assuming that the Wt production through vertical bar V-ts vertical bar and vertical bar V-td vertical bar is small. (C) 2012 CERN. Published by Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.