Abstract: Motivated by the recent diphoton excesses reported by both ATLAS and CMS collaborations, we suggest that a new heavy spinless particle is produced in gluon fusion at the LHC and decays to a couple of lighter pseudoscalars which then decay to photons. The new resonances could arise from a new strongly interacting sector and couple to Standard Model gauge bosons only via the corresponding Wess-Zumino-Witten anomaly. We present a detailed recast of the newest 13 TeV data from ATLAS and CMS together with the 8 TeV data to scan the consistency of the parameter space for those resonances.

Abstract: We present a family of exact solutions, depending on two parameters alpha and b (related to the scalar field strength), to the three-dimensional Einstein-scalar field equations with negative cosmological constant Lambda. For b not equal 0 these solutions reduce to the static Banados-Teitelboim-Zanelli (BTZ) family of vacuum solutions, with mass M = -alpha. For b not equal 0, the solutions become dynamical and develop a strong spacelike central singularity. The alpha < 0 solutions are black-hole like, with a global structure topologically similar to that of the BTZ black holes, and a finite effective mass. We show that the near-singularity behavior of the solutions with alpha > 0 agrees qualitatively with that observed in numerical simulations of sub-critical collapse, including the independence of the near-critical regime on the angle deficit of the spacetime. We analyze in the Lambda = 0 approximation the linear perturbations of the self-similar threshold solution, alpha = 0, and find that it has only one unstable growing mode, which qualifies it as a candidate critical solution for scalar field collapse.

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: We analyze 7.3 yr of ANTARES high-energy neutrino and Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) gamma-ray data in search of cosmic neutrino + gamma-ray (nu + gamma) transient sources or source populations. Our analysis has the potential to detect either individual nu + gamma transient sources (durations delta t less than or similar to 1000 s), if they exhibit sufficient gamma-ray or neutrino multiplicity, or a statistical excess of nu + gamma transients of individually lower multiplicities. Individual high gamma-ray multiplicity events could be produced, for example, by a single ANTARES neutrino in coincidence with a LAT-detected gamma-ray burst. Treating ANTARES track and cascade event types separately, we establish detection thresholds by Monte Carlo scrambling of the neutrino data, and determine our analysis sensitivity by signal injection against these scrambled data sets. We find our analysis is sensitive to nu + gamma transient populations responsible for >5% of the observed gamma-coincident neutrinos in the track data at 90% confidence. Applying our analysis to the unscrambled data reveals no individual nu + gamma events of high significance; two ANTARES track + Fermi gamma-ray events are identified that exceed a once per decade false alarm rate threshold (p = 17%). No evidence for subthreshold nu + gamma source populations is found among the track (p = 39%) or cascade (p = 60%) events. Exploring a possible correlation of high-energy neutrino directions with Fermi gamma-ray sky brightness identified in previous work yields no added support for this correlation. While TXS.0506+056, a blazar and variable (nontransient) Fermi gamma-ray source, has recently been identified as the first source of high-energy neutrinos, the challenges in reconciling observations of the Fermi gamma-ray sky, the IceCube high-energy cosmic neutrinos, and ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays using only blazars suggest a significant contribution by other source populations. Searches for transient sources of high-energy neutrinos thus remain interesting, with the potential for either neutrino clustering or multimessenger coincidence searches to lead to discovery of the first nu + gamma transients.

Abstract: A search for flavour changing neutral current (FCNC) processes in top-quark decays by the ATLAS Collaboration is presented. Data collected from pp collisions at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of root s = 7 TeV during 2011, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.1 fb(-1), were used. A search was performed for top-quark pair-production events, with one top quark decaying through the t -> Zq FCNC (q = u, c) channel, and the other through the Standard Model dominant mode t -> Wb. Only the decays of the Z boson to charged leptons and leptonic W-boson decays were considered as signal. Consequently, the final-state topology is characterised by the presence of three isolated charged leptons, at least two jets and missing transverse momentum from the undetected neutrino. No evidence for an FCNC signal was found. An upper limit on the t -> Zq branching ratio of BR(t -> Zq) < 0.73% is set at the 95% confidence level.