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: The identification of jets originating from quarks and gluons, often referred to as quark/gluon tagging, plays an important role in various analyses performed at the Large Hadron Collider, as Standard Model measurements and searches for new particles decaying to quarks often rely on suppressing a large gluon-induced background. This paper describes the measurement of the efficiencies of quark/gluon taggers developed within the ATLAS Collaboration, using root s = 13 TeV proton-proton collision data with an integrated luminosity of 140 fb(-1) collected by the ATLAS experiment. Two taggers with high performances in rejecting jets from gluon over jets from quarks are studied: one tagger is based on requirements on the number of inner-detector tracks associated with the jet, and the other combines several jet substructure observables using a boosted decision tree. A method is established to determine the quark/gluon fraction in data, by using quark/gluon-enriched subsamples defined by the jet pseudorapidity. Differences in tagging efficiency between data and simulation are provided for jets with transverse momentum between 500 GeV and 2 TeV and for multiple tagger working points.

Abstract: A search for long-lived particles decaying into hadrons is presented. The analysis uses 139 fb(-1) of pp collision data collected at root s = 13TeV by the ATLAS detector at the LHC using events that contain multiple energetic jets and a displaced vertex. The search employs dedicated reconstruction techniques that significantly increase the sensitivity to longlived particles decaying in the ATLAS inner detector. Background estimates for Standard Model processes and instrumental effects are extracted from data. The observed event yields are compatible with those expected from background processes. The results are used to set limits at 95% confidence level on model-independent cross sections for processes beyond the Standard Model, and on scenarios with pair-production of supersymmetric particles with long-lived electroweakinos that decay via a small R-parity-violating coupling. The pair-production of electroweakinos with masses below 1.5TeV is excluded for mean proper lifetimes in the range from 0.03 ns to 1 ns. When produced in the decay of m((g) over tilde) – 2.4TeV gluinos, electroweakinos with m((X) over tilde (0)(1)) = 1.5TeV are excluded with lifetimes in the range of 0.02 ns to 4 ns.

Abstract: The inclusive top-quark pair ( t (t) over bar) production cross-section sigma(t (t) over bar) is measured in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy root s = 5.02TeV, using 257 pb(-1) of data collected in 2017 by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The t (t) over bar cross-section is measured in both the dilepton and single-lepton final states of the t<overline> t system and then combined. The combination of the two measurements yields sigma(t (t) over bar) = 67.5 +/- 0.9 (stat.) +/- 2.3 (syst.) +/- 1.1 (lumi.) +/- 0.2 (beam) pb, where the four uncertainties reflect the limited size of the data sample, experimental and theoretical systematic effects, and imperfect knowledge of both the integrated luminosity and the LHC beam energy, giving a total uncertainty of 3.9%. The result is in agreement with theoretical quantum chromodynamic calculations at next-to-next-to-leading order in the strong coupling constant, including the resummation of next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic soft-gluon terms, and constrains the parton distribution functions of the proton at large Bjorken-x.