Abstract: The semiconductor tracker (SCT) is one of the tracking systems for charged particles in the ATLAS detector. It consists of 4088 silicon strip sensor modules. During Run 2 (2015-2018) the Large Hadron Collider delivered an integrated luminosity of 156 fb(-1) to the ATLAS experiment at a centre-of-mass proton-proton collision energy of 13 TeV. The instantaneous luminosity and pile-up conditions were far in excess of those assumed in the original design of the SCT detector. Due to improvements to the data acquisition system, the SCT operated stably throughout Run 2. It was available for 99.9% of the integrated luminosity and achieved a data-quality efficiency of 99.85%. Detailed studies have been made of the leakage current in SCT modules and the evolution of the full depletion voltage, which are used to study the impact of radiation damage to the modules. '

Abstract: The ATLAS experiment relies on real-time hadronic jet reconstruction and b-tagging to record fully hadronic events containing b-jets. These algorithms require track reconstruction, which is computationally expensive and could overwhelm the high-level-trigger farm, even at the reduced event rate that passes the ATLAS first stage hardware-based trigger. In LHC Run 3, ATLAS has mitigated these computational demands by introducing a fast neural-network-based b-tagger, which acts as a low-precision filter using input from hadronic jets and tracks. It runs after a hardware trigger and before the remaining high-level-trigger reconstruction. This design relies on the negligible cost of neural-network inference as compared to track reconstruction, and the cost reduction from limiting tracking to specific regions of the detector. In the case of Standard Model HH -> b (b) over barb (b) over bar, a key signature relying on b-jet triggers, the filter lowers the input rate to the remaining high-level trigger by a factor of five at the small cost of reducing the overall signal efficiency by roughly 2%.

Abstract: This paper presents the electron and photon energy calibration obtained with the ATLAS detector using 140 fb-1 of LHC proton -proton collision data recorded at -Js = 13 TeV between 2015 and 2018. Methods for the measurement of electron and photon energies are outlined, along with the current knowledge of the passive material in front of the ATLAS electromagnetic calorimeter. The energy calibration steps are discussed in detail, with emphasis on the improvements introduced in this paper. The absolute energy scale is set using a large sample of Z -boson decays into electron -positron pairs, and its residual dependence on the electron energy is used for the first time to further constrain systematic uncertainties. The achieved calibration uncertainties are typically 0.05% for electrons from resonant Z -boson decays, 0.4% at ET – 10 GeV, and 0.3% at ET – 1 TeV; for photons at ET <^>' 60 GeV, they are 0.2% on average. This is more than twice as precise as the previous calibration. The new energy calibration is validated using .11tfr -, ee and radiative Z -boson decays.

Abstract: This search, a type not previously performed at ATLAS, uses a comparison of the production cross sections for e(+)mu(-) and e(-)mu(+) pairs to constrain physics processes beyond the Standard Model. It uses 139 fb(-1) of proton-proton collision data recorded at root s = 13 TeV at the LHC. Targeting sources of new physics which prefer final states containing e(+)mu(-) and e(-)mu(+), the search contains two broad signal regions which are used to provide model-independent constraints on the ratio of cross sections at the 2% level. The search also has two special selections targeting supersymmetric models and leptoquark signatures. Observations using one of these selections are able to exclude, at 95% confidence level, singly produced smuons with masses up to 640 GeV in a model in which the only other light sparticle is a neutralino when the R-parity-violating coupling lambda(23)(1)' is close to unity. Observations using the other selection exclude scalar leptoquarks with masses below 1880 GeV when g(1R)(eu) = g(1R)(mu c) = 1, at 95% confidence level. The limit on the coupling reduces to g(1R)(eu) = g(1R)(mu c) = 0.46 for a mass of 1420 GeV.

Abstract: This letter documents a search for flavour-changing neutral currents (FCNCs), which are strongly sup-pressed in the Standard Model, in events with a photon and a top quark with the ATLAS detector. The analysis uses data collected in pp collisions at & RADIC;s =13 TeV during Run 2 of the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb-1. Both FCNC top-quark production and decay are considered. The final state consists of a charged lepton, missing transverse momentum, a b-tagged jet, one high-momentum photon and possibly additional jets. A multiclass deep neural network is used to classify events either as signal in one of the two categories, FCNC production or decay, or as background. No significant ex-cess of events over the background prediction is observed and 95% CL upper limits are placed on the strength of left-and right-handed FCNC interactions. The 95% CL bounds on the branching fractions for the FCNC top-quark decays, estimated (expected) from both top-quark production and decay, are B(t & RARR; u & gamma; ) < 0.85 (0.88+0.37 -0.25) x 10-5 and B(t & RARR; c & gamma; ) < 4.2 (3.40+1.35-0.95) x 10-5 for a left-handed tq & gamma; cou-pling, and B(t & RARR; u & gamma; ) < 1.2 (1.20+0.50 -0.33) x10-5 and B(t & RARR; c & gamma; ) < 4.5 (3.70+1.47 -1.03) x10-5 for a right-handed coupling.