Abstract: Leptons with essentially the same properties apart from their mass are grouped into three families (or flavours). The number of leptons of each flavour is conserved in interactions, but this is not imposed by fundamental principles. Since the formulation of the standard model of particle physics, the observation of flavour oscillations among neutrinos has shown that lepton flavour is not conserved in neutrino weak interactions. So far, there has been no experimental evidence that this also occurs in interactions between charged leptons. Such an observation would be a sign of undiscovered particles or a yet unknown type of interaction. Here the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN reports a constraint on lepton-flavour-violating effects in weak interactions, searching for Z-boson decays into a tau lepton and another lepton of different flavour with opposite electric charge. The branching fractions for these decays are measured to be less than 8.1 x 10(-6) (e tau) and 9.5 x 10(-6) (mu tau) at the 95% confidence level using 139 fb(-1) of proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of root s = 13 TeV and 20.3 fb(-1) at root s = 8 TeV. These results supersede the limits from the Large Electron-Positron Collider experiments conducted more than two decades ago.

Abstract: Electroweak symmetry breaking explains the origin of the masses of elementary particles through their interactions with the Higgs field. Besides the measurements of the Higgs boson properties, the study of the scattering of massive vector bosons with spin 1 allows the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking to be probed. Among all processes related to vector-boson scattering, the electroweak production of two jets and a Z-boson pair is a rare and important one. Here we report the observation of this process from proton-proton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139fb(-1) recorded at a centre-of-mass energy of 13TeV with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. We consider two different final states originating from the decays of the Z-boson pair: one containing four charged leptons and another containing two charged leptons and two neutrinos. The hypothesis of no electroweak production is rejected with a statistical significance of 5.7 sigma, and the measured cross-section for electroweak production is consistent with the Standard Model prediction. In addition, we report cross-sections for inclusive production of a Z-boson pair and two jets for the two final states.

Abstract: Distributions sensitive to the underlying event are studied in events containing one or more chargedparticle jets produced in pp collisions at root s = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). These measurements reflect 800 μb(-1) of data taken during 2010. Jets are reconstructed using the anti-k(t) algorithm with radius parameter R varying between 0.2 and 1.0. Distributions of the charged-particle multiplicity, the scalar sum of the transverse momentum of charged particles, and the average charged-particle p(T) are measured as functions of p(T)(jet) in regions transverse to and opposite the leading jet for 4 GeV < p(T)(jet) < 100 GeV. In addition, the R dependence of the mean values of these observables is studied. In the transverse region, both the multiplicity and the scalar sum of the transverse momentum at fixed p(T)(jet) vary significantly with R, while the average charged- particle transverse momentum has a minimal dependence on R. Predictions from several Monte Carlo tunes have been compared to the data; the predictions from Pythia 6, based on tunes that have been determined using LHC data, show reasonable agreement with the data, including the dependence on R. Comparisons with other generators indicate that additional tuning of soft-QCD parameters is necessary for these generators. The measurements presented here provide a testing ground for further development of the Monte Carlo models.

Abstract: Jets are identified and their properties studied in center-of-mass energy sqrt(s) = 7 TeV proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider using charged particles measured by the ATLAS inner detector. Events are selected using a minimum bias trigger, allowing jets at very low transverse momentum to be observed and their characteristics in the transition to high-momentum fully perturbative jets to be studied. Jets are reconstructed using the anti-k(t) algorithm applied to charged particles with two radius parameter choices, 0.4 and 0.6. An inclusive charged jet transverse momentum cross section measurement from 4 GeV to 100 GeV is shown for four ranges in rapidity extending to 1.9 and corrected to charged particle-level truth jets. The transverse momenta and longitudinal momentum fractions of charged particles within jets are measured, along with the charged particle multiplicity and the particle density as a function of radial distance from the jet axis. Comparison of the data with the theoretical models implemented in existing tunings of Monte Carlo event generators indicates reasonable overall agreement between data and Monte Carlo. These comparisons are sensitive to Monte Carlo parton showering, hadronization, and soft physics models.

Abstract: The production of K(S)(0) and Lambda hadrons is studied in pp collision data at root s = 0.9 and 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using a minimum-bias trigger. The observed distributions of transverse momentum, rapidity, and multiplicity are corrected to hadron level in a model-independent way within well-defined phase-space regions. The distribution of the production ratio of (Lambda) over bar to Lambda baryons is also measured. The results are compared with various Monte Carlo simulation models. Although most of these models agree with data to within 15% in the K(S)(0) distributions, substantial disagreements are found in the Lambda distributions of transverse momentum.