Abstract: A search for Higgs boson pair production in events with two b-jets and two tau -leptons is presented, using a proton-proton collision dataset with an integrated luminosity of 139 fb(-1) collected at root s = 13TeV by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. Higgs boson pairs produced non-resonantly or in the decay of a narrow scalar resonance in the mass range from 251 to 1600 GeV are targeted. Events in which at least one tau-lepton decays hadronically are considered, and multivariate discriminants are used to reject the backgrounds. No significant excess of events above the expected background is observed in the non-resonant search. The largest excess in the resonant search is observed at a resonance mass of 1 TeV, with a local (global) significance of 3.1 sigma (2.0 sigma). Observed (expected) 95% confidence-level upper limits are set on the non-resonant Higgs boson pair-production cross-section at 4.7 (3.9) times the Standard Model prediction, assuming Standard Model kinematics, and on the resonant Higgs boson pair-production cross-section at between 21 and 900 fb (12 and 840 fb), depending on the mass of the narrow scalar resonance.

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: A search for flavour-changing neutral current (FCNC) tqH interactions involving a top quark, another up-type quark (q = u, c), and a Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson decaying into a tau-lepton pair (H -> tau(+)tau(-)) is presented. The search is based on a dataset of pp collisions at root s = 13 TeV that corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb(-1) recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Two processes are considered: single top quark FCNC production in association with a Higgs boson (pp -> tH), and top quark pair production in which one of top quarks decays into Wb and the other decays into qH through the FCNC interactions. The search selects events with two hadronically decaying tau-lepton candidates (tau(had)) or at least one tau(had) with an additional lepton (e, mu), as well as multiple jets. Event kinematics is used to separate signal from the background through a multivariate discriminant. A slight excess of data is observed with a significance of 2.3 sigma above the expected SM background, and 95% CL upper limits on the t -> qH branching ratios are derived. The observed (expected) 95% CL upper limits set on the t -> cH and t -> uH branching ratios are 9.4x10(-4)(4.8(-1.4)(+2.2) x 10(-4)) and 6.9x10(-4) (3.5(-1.0)(+1.5) x10(-4)), respectively. The corresponding combined observed (expected) upper limits on the dimension-6 operator Wilson coefficients in the effective tqH couplings are C-c phi < 1.35 (0.97) and C-u phi < 1.16 (0.82).