Abstract: Higgs-pair production via gluon fusion is the dominant production mechanism of Higgs-boson pairs at hadron colliders. In this work, we present details of our numerical determination of the full next-to-leading-order (NLO) QCD corrections to the leading top-quark loops. Since gluon fusion is a loop-induced process at leading order, the NLO calculation requires the calculation of massive two-loop diagrams with up to four different mass/energy scales involved. With the current methods, this can only be done numerically, if no approximations are used. We discuss the setup and details of our numerical integration. This will be followed by a phenomenological analysis of the NLO corrections and their impact on the total cross section and the invariant Higgs-pair mass distribution. The last part of our work will be devoted to the determination of the residual theoretical uncertainties with special emphasis on the uncertainties originating from the scheme and scale dependence of the (virtual) top mass. The impact of the trilinear Higgs-coupling variation on the total cross section will be discussed.

Abstract: Measurements of the production cross-sections of the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson (H) decaying into a pair of tau -leptons are presented. The measurements use data collected with the ATLAS detector from pp collisions produced at the Large Hadron Collider at a centre-of-mass energy of p root s = 13TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb-1. Leptonic ( tau -> l upsilon(l)upsilon(tau)) and hadronic ( tau -> hadrons upsilon tau) decays of the tau -lepton are considered. All measurements account for the branching ratio of H -> tau tau and are performed with a requirement |yH| < 2.5, where yH is the true Higgs boson rapidity. The cross-section of the pp -> H -> tau tau process is measured to be 2.94 +/- 0.21(stat)+ 0.37 – 0.32(syst) pb, in agreement with the SM prediction of 3.17 +/- 0.09 pb. Inclusive cross-sections are determined separately for the four dominant production modes: 2.65 +/- 0.41(stat)+ 0.91 – 0.67(syst) pb for gluon-gluon fusion, 0.197 +/- 0.028(stat)+ 0.032 – 0.026(syst) pb for vectorboson fusion, 0.115 +/- 0.058(stat)+ 0.042 – 0.040(syst) pb for vector-boson associated production, and 0.033 +/- 0.031(stat)+ 0.022 – 0.017(syst) pb for top-quark pair associated production. Measurements in exclusive regions of the phase space, using the simplified template cross-section framework, are also performed. All results are in agreement with the SM predictions.

Abstract: In this paper, a new technique for reconstructing and identifying hadronically decaying tau (+)tau (-) pairs with a large Lorentz boost, referred to as the di-tau tagger, is developed and used for the first time in the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. A benchmark di-tau tagging selection is employed in the search for resonant Higgs boson pair production, where one Higgs boson decays into a boosted bbbar pair and the other into a boosted tau (+)tau (-) pair, with two hadronically decaying tau -leptons in the final state. Using 139 fb(-1) of proton-proton collision data recorded at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, the efficiency of the di-tau tagger is determined and the background with quark- or gluon-initiated jets misidentified as di-tau objects is estimated. The search for a heavy, narrow, scalar resonance produced via gluon-gluon fusion and decaying into two Higgs bosons is carried out in the mass range 1-3 TeV using the same dataset. No deviations from the Standard Model predictions are observed, and 95% confidence-level exclusion limits are set on this model.