Abstract: This letter reports the observation of () production in proton-proton collisions. This measurement uses the full Run 2 sample of events recorded at a center-of-mass energy of root= 13 TeV by the ATLAS detector at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 140 fb-1. Events with a leptonically-decaying boson and at least two photons are considered. The background-only hypothesis is rejected with an observed and expected significance of 5.6 standard deviations. The inclusive fiducial production cross section of () and () events is measured to be fid = 13.8 +/- 1.1(stat)+2.1-2.0(syst) +/- 0.1(lumi) fb, in agreement with the Standard Model prediction.

Abstract: A search for the decay of the Higgs boson to a Z boson and a light, pseudoscalar particle, a, decaying respectively to two leptons and to two photons is reported. The search uses the full LHC Run 2 proton-proton collision data at root s = 13 TeV, corresponding to 139 fb-1 collected by the ATLAS detector. This is one of the first searches for this specific decay mode of the Higgs boson, and it probes unexplored parameter space in models with axion-like particles (ALPs) and extended scalar sectors. The mass of the a particle is assumed to be in the range 0.1-33 GeV. The data are analysed in two categories: a merged category where the photons from the a decay are reconstructed in the ATLAS calorimeter as a single cluster, and a resolved category in which two separate photons are detected. The main background processes are from Standard Model Z boson production in association with photons or jets. The data are in agreement with the background predictions, and upper limits on the branching ratio of the Higgs boson decay to Za times the branching ratio a -> yy are derived at the 95% confidence level and they range from 0.08% to 2% depending on the mass of the a particle. The results are also interpreted in the context of ALP models.

Abstract: Jet quenching is the process of color-charged partons losing energy via interactions with quark-gluon plasma droplets created in heavy-ion collisions. The collective expansion of such droplets is well described by viscous hydrodynamics. Similar evidence of collectivity is consistently observed in smaller collision systems, including pp and p+ Pb collisions. In contrast, while jet quenching is observed in Pb + Pb collisions, no evidence has been found in these small systems to date, raising fundamental questions about the nature of the system created in these collisions. The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider has measured the yield of charged hadrons correlated with reconstructed jets in 0.36 nb-1 of p+ Pb and 3.6 pb-1 of pp collisions at 5.02 TeV. The yields of charged hadrons with p(T)(ch) > 0.5 GeV near and opposite in azimuth to jets with p(t)(je) T > 30 or 60 GeV, and the ratios of these yields between p+ Pb and pp collisions, IpPb, are reported. The collision centrality of p+ Pb events is categorized by the energy deposited by forward neutrons from the struck nucleus. The IpPb values are consistent with unity within a few percent for hadrons with p(T )(ch)> 4 GeV at all centralities. These data provide new, strong constraints that preclude almost any parton energy loss in central p+ Pb collisions.

Abstract: This Letter reports the observation of single top quarks produced together with a photon, which directly probes the electroweak coupling of the top quark. The analysis uses 139 fb(-1) of 13 TeV proton-proton collision data collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Requiring a photon with transverse momentum larger than 20 GeV and within the detector acceptance, the fiducial cross section is measured to be 688 +/- 23(stat)(-71)(+75) (syst) fb, to be compared with the standard model prediction of 515(-42)(+36) fb at next-to-leading order in QCD.

Abstract: A key open question in the study of multiparticle production in high-energy pp collisions is the relationship between the “ridge”-i.e., the observed azimuthal correlations between particles in the underlying event that extend over all rapidities-and hard or semihard scattering processes. In particular, it is not known whether jets or their soft fragments are correlated with particles in the underlying event. To address this question, two-particle correlations are measured in pp collisions at collected by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, with an integrated luminosity of 15.8 pb-1, in two different configurations. In the first case, charged particles associated with jets are excluded from the correlation analysis, while in the second case, correlations are measured between particles within jets and charged particles from the underlying event. Second-order flow coefficients, v2, are presented as a function of event multiplicity and transverse momentum. These measurements show that excluding particles associated with jets does not affect the measured correlations. Moreover, particles associated with jets do not exhibit any significant azimuthal correlations with the underlying event, ruling out hard processes contributing to the ridge. p= 13 TeV using data ffiffi s