Abstract: The Tile hadronic calorimeter of the ATLAS detector has undergone extensive testing in the experimental hall since its installation in late 2005. The readout, control and calibration systems have been fully operational since 2007 and the detector has successfully collected data from the LHC single beams in 2008 and first collisions in 2009. This paper gives an overview of the Tile Calorimeter performance as measured using random triggers, calibration data, data from cosmic ray muons and single beam data. The detector operation status, noise characteristics and performance of the calibration systems are presented, as well as the validation of the timing and energy calibration carried out with minimum ionising cosmic ray muons data. The calibration systems' precision is well below the design value of 1%. The determination of the global energy scale was performed with an uncertainty of 4%.

Abstract: This paper reports on a search for heavy resonances decaying into WW, ZZ or WZ using proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of integral s = 13TeV. The data, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb(1), were recorded with the ATLAS detector from 2015 to 2018 at the Large Hadron Collider. The search is performed for final states in which one W or Z boson decays leptonically, and the other W boson or Z boson decays hadronically. The data are found to be described well by expected backgrounds. Upper bounds on the production cross sections of heavy scalar, vector or tensor resonances are derived in the mass range 300-5000 GeV within the context of Standard Model extensions with warped extra dimensions or including a heavy vector triplet. Production through gluon-gluon fusion, Drell-Yan or vector-boson fusion are considered, depending on the assumed model.

Abstract: Quantum Chromodynamics, the theory of quarks and gluons, whose interactions can be described by a local SU(3) gauge symmetry with charges called “color quantum numbers”, is reviewed; the goal of this review is to provide advanced Ph.D. students a comprehensive handbook, helpful for their research. When QCD was “discovered” 50 years ago, the idea that quarks could exist, but not be observed, left most physicists unconvinced. Then, with the discovery of charmonium in 1974 and the explanation of its excited states using the Cornell potential, consisting of the sum of a Coulomb-like attraction and a long range linear confining potential, the theory was suddenly widely accepted. This paradigm shift is now referred to as the November revolution. It had been anticipated by the observation of scaling in deep inelastic scattering, and was followed by the discovery of gluons in three-jet events. The parameters of QCD include the running coupling constant, as (Q(2)), that varies with the energy scale Q(2) characterising the interaction, and six quark masses. QCD cannot be solved analytically, at least not yet, and the large value of alpha(s) at low momentum transfers limits perturbative calculations to the high-energy region where Q(2) >>Lambda(QCD) (2) similar or equal to (250 MeV)(2). Lattice QCD (LQCD), numerical calculations on a discretized space-time lattice, is discussed in detail, the dynamics of the QCD vacuum is visualized, and the expected spectra of mesons and baryons are displayed. Progress in lattice calculations of the structure of nucleons and of quantities related to the phase diagram of dense and hot (or cold) hadronic matter are reviewed. Methods and examples of how to calculate hadronic corrections to weak matrix elements on a lattice are outlined. The wide variety of analytical approximations currently in use, and the accuracy of these approximations, are reviewed. Thesemethods range from the Bethe-Salpeter, Dyson-Schwinger coupled relativistic equations, which are formulated in bothMinkowski or Euclidean spaces, to expansions of multi-quark states in a set of basis functions using light-front coordinates, to the AdS/QCD method that imbeds 4-dimensionalQCDin a 5-dimensional deSitter space, allowing confinement and spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking to be described in a novel way. Models that assume the number of colors is very large, i.e. make use of the large Nclimit, give unique insights. Many other techniques that are tailored to specific problems, such as perturbative expansions for high energy scattering or approximate calculations using the operator product expansion are discussed. The very powerful effective field theory techniques that are successful for low energy nuclear systems (chiral effective theory), or for non-relativistic systems involving heavy quarks, or the treatment of gluon exchanges between energetic, collinear partons encountered in jets, are discussed. The spectroscopy of mesons and baryons has played an important historical role in the development of QCD. The famous X,Y,Z states – and the discovery of pentaquarks – have revolutionized hadron spectroscopy; their status and interpretation are reviewed as well as recent progress in the identification of glueballs and hybrids in light-meson spectroscopy. These exotic states add to the spectrum of expected q ($) over barq mesons and qqq baryons. The progress in understanding excitations of light and heavy baryons is discussed. The nucleon as the lightest baryon is discussed extensively, its form factors, its partonic structure and the status of the attempt to determine a three-dimensional picture of the parton distribution. An experimental program to study the phase diagram of QCD at high temperature and density started with fixed target experiments in various laboratories in the second half of the 1980s, and then, in this century, with colliders. QCD thermodynamics at high temperature became accessible to LQCD, and numerical results on chiral and deconfinement transitions and properties of the deconfined and chirally restored form of strongly interacting matter, called the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), have become very precise by now. These results can now be confronted with experimental data that are sensitive to the nature of the phase transition. There is clear evidence that the QGP phase is created. This phase of QCD matter can already be characterized by some properties that indicate, within a temperature range of a few times the pseudocritical temperature, the medium behaves like a near ideal liquid. Experimental observables are presented that demonstrate deconfinement. High and ultrahigh density QCD matter at moderate and low temperatures shows interesting features and new phases that are of astrophysical relevance. They are reviewed here and some of the astrophysical implications are discussed. Perturbative QCD and methods to describe the different aspects of scattering processes are discussed. The primary partonparton scattering in a collision is calculated in perturbative QCD with increasing complexity. The radiation of soft gluons can spoil the perturbative convergence, this can be cured by resummation techniques, which are also described here. Realistic descriptions of QCD scattering events need to model the cascade of quark and gluon splittings until hadron formation sets in, which is done by parton showers. The full event simulation can be performed with Monte Carlo event

Abstract: A search for chargino-neutralino pair production in three-lepton final states with missing transverse momentum is presented. The study is based on a dataset of root s = 13 TeV pp collisions recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb(-1). No significant excess relative to the Standard Model predictions is found in data. The results are interpreted in simplified models of supersymmetry, and statistically combined with results from a previous ATLAS search for compressed spectra in two-lepton final states. Various scenarios for the production and decay of charginos ((chi) over tilde (+/-)(1)) and neutralinos ((chi) over tilde (0)(2)) are considered. For pure higgsino (chi) over tilde (+/-)(1)(chi) over tilde (0)(2) pair-production scenarios, exclusion limits at 95% confidence level are set on (chi) over tilde (0)(2) masses up to 210 GeV. Limits are also set for pure wino (chi) over tilde (+/-)(1)(chi) over tilde (0)(2) pair production, on (chi) over tilde (0)(2) masses up to 640 GeV for decays via on-shell W and Z bosons, up to 300 GeV for decays via off-shell W and Z bosons, and up to 190 GeV for decays via W and Standard Model Higgs bosons.

Abstract: We present the details and first results of a new strategy for the determination of alpha s(mZ) (ALPHA Collaboration et al. in Phys. Lett. B 807:135571, 2020). By simultaneously decoupling 3 fictitious heavy quarks we establish a relation between the A-parameters of three-flavor QCD and pure gauge theory. Very precise recent results in the pure gauge theory (Dalla Brida and Ramos in Eur. Phys. J. C 79(8):720, 2019; Nada and Ramos in Eur Phys J C 81(1):1, 2021) can thus be leveraged to obtain the three flavour A-parameter in units of a common decoupling scale. Connecting this scale to hadronic physics in 3-flavour QCD leads to our result in physical units, A(3)/MS = 336(12) MeV, which translates to alpha s(m(Z)) = 0.11823(84). This is compatible with both the FLAG average (Aoki et al. in FLAG review 2021. arXiv:2111.09849 [hep-lat]) and the previous ALPHA result (ALPHA Collaboration et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 119(10):102001, 2017), with a comparable, yet still statistics dominated, error. This constitutes a highly non-trivial check, as the decoupling strategy is conceptually very different from the 3-flavour QCD step-scaling method, and so are their systematic errors. These include the uncertainties of the combined decoupling and continuum limits, which we discuss in some detail. We also quantify the correlation between both results, due to some common elements, such as the scale determination in physical units and the definition of the energy scale where we apply decoupling.