Abstract: A measurement of the cross section for the inclusive production of isolated prompt photons in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of root s = 8 TeV is presented. The measurement covers the pseudorapidity ranges vertical bar eta(gamma)vertical bar < 1.37 and 1.56 aecurrency sign vertical bar eta(gamma)vertical bar < 2.37 in the transverse energy range 25 < E-T(gamma) < 1500 GeV. The results are based on an integrated luminosity of 20.2 fb(-1), recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Photon candidates are identified by combining information from the calorimeters and the inner tracker. The background is subtracted using a data-driven technique, based on the observed calorimeter shower-shape variables and the deposition of hadronic energy in a narrow cone around the photon candidate. The measured cross sections are compared with leading-order and next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations and are found to be in a good agreement over ten orders of magnitude.

Abstract: There exists a vast literature examining the electroweak (EW) fine-tuning problem in supersymmetric scenarios, but little concerned with the dark matter (DM) one, which should be combined with the former. In this paper, we study this problem in an, as much as possible, exhaustive and rigorous way. We have considered the MSSM framework, assuming that the LSP is the lightest neutralino, chi(0)(1), and exploring the various possibilities for the mass and composition of chi(0)(1), as well as different mechanisms for annihilation of the DM particles in the early Universe (well-tempered neutralinos, funnels and co-annihilation scenarios). We also present a discussion about the statistical meaning of the fine-tuning and how it should be computed for the DM abundance, and combined with the EW fine-tuning. The results are very robust and model-independent and favour some scenarios (like the h-funnel when M-chi 10 is not too close to m(h)/2) with respect to others (such as the pure wino case). These features should be taken into account when one explores “natural SUSY” scenarios and their possible signatures at the LHC and in DM detection experiments.

Abstract: Searches for new resonances decaying into two photons in the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider are described. The analysis is based on protonproton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb(-1) at root s = 13TeV recorded in 2015. Two searches are performed, one targeted at a spin-2 particle of mass larger than 500 GeV, using Randall-Sundrum graviton states as a benchmark model, and one optimized for a spin-0 particle of mass larger than 200 GeV. Varying both the mass and the decay width, the most significant deviation from the background-only hypothesis is observed at a diphoton invariant mass around 750 GeV with local significances of 3.8 and 3.9 standard deviations in the searches optimized for a spin-2 and spin-0 particle, respectively. The global significances are estimated to be 2.1 standard deviations for both analyses. The consistency between the data collected at 13TeV and 8TeV is also evaluated. Limits on the production cross section times branching ratio to two photons for the two resonance types are reported.

Abstract: The production of W boson pairs in proton-proton collisions at root s = 8TeV is studied using data corresponding to 20.3 fb(-1) of integrated luminosity collected by the ATLAS detector during 2012 at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The W bosons are reconstructed using their leptonic decays into electrons or muons and neutrinos. Events with reconstructed jets are not included in the candidate event sample. A total of 6636 W W candidate events are observed. Measurements are performed in fiducial regions closely approximating the detector acceptance. The integrated measurement is corrected for all acceptance effects and for the W branching fractions to leptons in order to obtain the total W W production cross section, which is found to be 71.1 +/- 1.1( stat) + (5.7) (5.0) (syst) +/- 1 : 4( lumi) pb. This agrees with the next-to-next-to-leading-order Standard Model prediction of 63.2(+1.6) (-1.4) (scale) +/- 1.2(PDF) pb. Fiducial differential cross sections are measured as a function of each of six kinematic variables. The distribution of the transverse momentum of the leading lepton is used to set limits on anomalous triple-gauge-boson couplings.

Abstract: Lepton number violation is searched for at the LHC using same-sign leptons plus jets. The standard lore is that the ratio of same-sign lepton to opposite-sign lepton events, R-ll, is equal to R-ll = 1 (R-ll = 0) for Majorana (Dirac) neutrinos. We clarify under which conditions the ratio Rll can assume values different from 0 and 1, and we argue that the precise value 0 < R-ll < 1 is controlled by the mass splitting versus the width of the quasi-Dirac resonances. A measurement of R-ll not equal 0, 1 would then contain valuable information about the origin of neutrino masses. We consider as an example the inverse seesaw mechanism in a left-right symmetric scenario, which is phenomenologically particularly interesting since all the heavy states in the high energy completion of the model could be within experimental reach. A prediction of this scenario is a correlation between the values of R-ll and the ratio between the rates for heavy neutrino decays into standard model gauge bosons, and into three body final states ljj mediated by off-shell W-R exchange.