Abstract: Direct searches for lepton flavor violation in decays of the Z boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC are presented. Decays of the Z boson into an electron or muon and a hadronically decaying r lepton are considered. The searches are based on a data sample of proton-proton collisions collected by the ATLAS detector in 2015 and 2016, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.1 fb(-1) at a center-of-mass energy of root s = 13 TeV. No statistically significant excess of events above the expected background is observed, and upper limits on the branching ratios of lepton-flavor-violating decays are set at the 95% confidence level: B(Z -> e tau) < 5.8 x 10(-5) and B(Z -> μtau) < 2.4 x 10(-5). This is the first limit on B(Z -> e tau) with ATLAS data. The upper limit on 13(Z -> μtau) is combined with a previous ATLAS result based on 20.3 fb(-1) of proton protoncollision data at a center-of-mass energy of root s = 8 TeV and the combined upper limit at 95% confidence level is B(Z -> μtau) < 1.3 x 10(-5).

Abstract: A search is performed for a heavy particle decaying into different-flavor, dilepton pairs (e mu, e tau or μtau), using 36.1 fb(-1) of proton-proton collision data at root s = 13 TeV collected in 2015-2016 by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. No excesses over the Standard Model predictions are observed. Bayesian lower limits at the 95% credibility level are placed on the mass of a Z' boson, the mass of a supersymmetric tau-sneutrino, and on the threshold mass for quantum black-hole production. For the Z' and sneutrino models, upper cross-section limits are converted to upper limits on couplings, which are compared with similar limits from low-energy experiments and which are more stringent for the e tau and μtau modes.

Abstract: We report a study of final states containing a W boson and hadronic jets, produced in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. The data were collected with the ATLAS detector at the CERN LHC and comprise the full 2010 data sample of 36 pb(-1). Cross sections are determined using both the electron and muon decay modes of the W boson and are presented as a function of inclusive jet multiplicity, N-jet, for up to five jets. At each multiplicity, cross sections are presented as a function of jet transverse momentum, the scalar sum of the transverse momenta of the charged lepton, missing transverse momentum, and all jets, the invariant mass spectra of jets, and the rapidity distributions of various combinations of leptons and final-state jets. The results, corrected for all detector effects and for all backgrounds such as diboson and top quark pair production, are compared with particle-level predictions from perturbative QCD. Leading-order multiparton event generators, normalized to the next-to-next-to-leading-order total cross section for inclusive W-boson production, describe the data reasonably well for all measured inclusive jet multiplicities. Next-to-leading-order calculations from MCFM, studied here for N-jet <= 2, and BLACKHAT-SHERPA, studied here for N-jet <= 4, are found to be mostly in good agreement with the data.