ATLAS Collaboration(Aad, G. et al), Aikot, A., Amos, K. R., Aparisi Pozo, J. A., Bailey, A. J., Bouchhar, N., et al. (2023). Measurement of the cross-sections of the electroweak and total production of a Zγ pair in association with two jets in pp collisions at √s= 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector. Phys. Lett. B, 846, 138222–30pp.
Abstract: This Letter presents the measurement of the fiducial and differential cross-sections of the electroweak production of a Zγ pair in association with two jets. The analysis uses 140 fb−1 of LHC proton-proton collision data taken at s√=13 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector during the years 2015-2018. Events with a Z boson candidate decaying into either an e+e− or μ+μ− pair, a photon and two jets are selected. The electroweak component is extracted by requiring a large dijet invariant mass and a large rapidity gap between the two jets and is measured with an observed and expected significance well above five standard deviations. The fiducial pp→Zγjj cross-section for the electroweak production is measured to be 3.6 ± 0.5 fb. The total fiducial cross-section that also includes contributions where the jets arise from strong interactions is measured to be 16.8+2.0−1.8 fb. The results are consistent with the Standard Model predictions. Differential cross-sections are also measured using the same events and are compared with parton-shower Monte Carlo simulations. Good agreement is observed between data and predictions.
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ATLAS Collaboration(Aad, G. et al), Aparisi Pozo, J. A., Bailey, A. J., Cabrera Urban, S., Cardillo, F., Castillo, F. L., et al. (2021). Search for charged-lepton-flavour violation in Z-boson decays with the ATLAS detector. Nat. Phys., 17, 819–825.
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.
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ATLAS Collaboration(Aad, G. et al), Aparisi Pozo, J. A., Bailey, A. J., Cabrera Urban, S., Cardillo, F., Castillo, F. L., et al. (2021). Test of the universality of τ and μ lepton couplings in W-boson decays with the ATLAS detector. Nat. Phys., 17, 813–818.
Abstract: The standard model of particle physics encapsulates our best current understanding of physics at the smallest scales. A fundamental axiom of this theory is the universality of the couplings of the different generations of leptons to the electroweak gauge bosons. The measurement of the ratio of the decay rate of W bosons to t leptons and muons, R(tau/mu), constitutes an important test of this axiom. Using 139 fb(-1) of proton-proton collisions recorded with the ATLAS detector at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, we report a measurement of this quantity from di-leptonic tt events where the top quarks decay into a W boson and a bottom quark. We can distinguish muons originating from W bosons and those originating from an intermediate t lepton through the muon transverse impact parameter and differences in the muon transverse momentum spectra. The measured value of R(tau/mu) is 0.992 +/- 0.013 [+/- 0.007(stat) +/- 0.011(syst)] and is in agreement with the hypothesis of universal lepton couplings as postulated in the standard model. This is the only such measurement from the Large Hadron Collider, so far, and obtains twice the precision of previous measurements.
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ATLAS Collaboration(Aad, G. et al), Aparisi Pozo, J. A., Bailey, A. J., Cabrera Urban, S., Cardillo, F., Castillo, F. L., et al. (2021). Measurement of light-by-light scattering and search for axion-like particles with 2.2 nb(-1) of Pb+Pb data with the ATLAS detector. J. High Energy Phys., 03(3), 243–45pp.
Abstract: This paper describes a measurement of light-by-light scattering based on Pb+Pb collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment during Run 2 of the LHC. The study uses 2.2 nb(-1) of integrated luminosity collected in 2015 and 2018 at root sNN = 5.02TeV. Light-by-light scattering candidates are selected in events with two photons produced exclusively, each with transverse energy E-T(gamma) > 2.5 GeV, pseudorapidity vertical bar eta(gamma)vertical bar < 2.37, diphoton invariant mass m(gamma gamma) > 5 GeV, and with small diphoton transverse momentum and diphoton acoplanarity. The integrated and differential fiducial cross sections are measured and compared with theoretical predictions. The diphoton invariant mass distribution is used to set limits on the production of axion-like particles. This result provides the most stringent limits to date on axion-like particle production for masses in the range 6-100 GeV. Cross sections above 2 to 70 nb are excluded at the 95% CL in that mass interval.
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ATLAS Collaboration(Aad, G. et al), Aparisi Pozo, J. A., Bailey, A. J., Cabrera Urban, S., Castillo, F. L., Castillo Gimenez, V., et al. (2023). Measurement of cross sections for production of a Z boson in association with a flavor-inclusive or doubly b-tagged large-radius jet in proton-proton collisions at p s=13 TeV with the ATLAS experiment. Phys. Rev. D, 108(1), 012022–32pp.
Abstract: We present measurements of cross sections for production of a leptonically decaying Z boson in association with a large-radius jet in 13 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC, using 36 fb-1 of data from the ATLAS detector. Integrated and differential cross sections are measured at particle level in both a flavor inclusive and a doubly b-tagged fiducial phase space. The large-radius jet mass and transverse momentum, its kinematic relationship to the Z boson, and the angular separation of b-tagged small-radius track jets within the large-radius jet are measured. This measurement constitutes an important test of perturbative quantum chromodynamics in kinematic and flavor configurations relevant to several Higgs boson and beyond-Standard-Model physics analyses. The results highlight issues with modeling of additional hadronic activity in the flavor-inclusive selection, and a distinction between flavor-number schemes in the b-tagged phase space.
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