Abstract: This Letter reports on a search for off-shell production of the Higgs boson using 139 fb(-1) of pp collision data at root s = 13 TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The signature is a pair of Z bosons, with contributions from both the production and subsequent decay of a virtual Higgs boson and the interference of that process with other processes. The two observable final states are ZZ -> 4l and Z Z -> 2l2 nu with l = e or mu. In the ZZ -> 4l final state, a dense Neural Network is used to enhance analysis sensitivity with respect to matrix element-based discrimination. The background-only hypothesis is rejected with an observed (expected) significance of 3.3 (2.2) standard deviations, representing experimental evidence for off-shell Higgs boson production. Assuming that no new particles enter the production of the virtual Higgs boson, its total width can be deduced from the measurement of its off-shell production cross-section. The measured total width of the Higgs boson is 4.5(-2.5)(+3.3) MeV, and the observed (expected) upper limit on the total width is found to be 10.5 (10.9) MeV at 95% confidence level.

Abstract: The ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider has been used to measure jet substructure modification and suppression in Pb+Pb collisions at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy root sNN = 5.02 TeV in comparison with proton-proton (pp) collisions at root s = 5.02 TeV. The Pb+Pb data, collected in 2018, have an integrated luminosity of 1.72 nb(-1), while the pp data, collected in 2017, have an integrated luminosity of 260 pb(-1). Jets used in this analysis are clustered using the anti-k(t) algorithm with a radius parameter R = 0.4. The jet constituents, defined by both tracking and calorimeter information, are used to determine the angular scale rg of the first hard splitting inside the jet by reclustering them using the Cambridge-Aachen algorithm and employing the soft-drop grooming technique. The nuclear modification factor, RAA, used to characterize jet suppression in Pb+Pb collisions, is presented differentially in rg, jet transverse momentum, and in intervals of collision centrality. The RAA value is observed to depend significantly on jet r(g). Jets produced with the largest measured r(g) are found to be twice as suppressed as those with the smallest rg in central Pb+Pb collisions. The RAA values do not exhibit a strong variation with jet p(T) in any of the rg intervals. The r(g) and p(T) dependence of jet RAA is qualitatively consistent with a picture of jet quenching arising from coherence and provides the most direct evidence in support of this approach.

Abstract: A measurement of novel event shapes quantifying the isotropy of collider events is performed in 140 fb(-1) of proton-proton collisions with root s = 13TeV centre-of-mass energy recorded with the ATLAS detector at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. These event shapes are defined as the Wasserstein distance between collider events and isotropic reference geometries. This distance is evaluated by solving optimal transport problems, using the 'Energy-Mover's Distance'. Isotropic references with cylindrical and circular symmetries are studied, to probe the symmetries of interest at hadron colliders. The novel event-shape observables defined in this way are infrared- and collinear-safe, have improved dynamic range and have greater sensitivity to isotropic radiation patterns than other event shapes. The measured event-shape variables are corrected for detector effects, and presented in inclusive bins of jet multiplicity and the scalar sum of the two leading jets' transverse momenta. The measured distributions are provided as inputs to future Monte Carlo tuning campaigns and other studies probing fundamental properties of QCD and the production of hadronic final states up to the TeV-scale.

Abstract: Searches for the exclusive decays of the Higgs boson to an omega meson and a photon or a K* meson and a photon can probe flavour-conserving and flavour-violating Higgs boson couplings to light quarks, respectively. Searches for these decays, along with the analogous Z boson decay to an omega meson and a photon, are performed with a pp collision data sample corresponding to integrated luminosities of up to 134 fb(-1) collected at root s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The obtained 95% confidence-level upper limits on the respective branching fractions are B(H -> omega gamma) < 5.5 x 10(-4), B(H -> K*gamma) < 2.2 x 10(-4) and B(Z -> omega gamma) < 3.9 x 10(-6). The limits for H -> omega gamma and Z -> omega gamma) are 370 times and 140 times the Standard Model expected values, respectively. The result for Z -> omega gamma corresponds to a two-orders-of-magnitude improvement over the limit obtained by the DELPHI experiment at LEP.

Abstract: A test of CP invariance in Higgs boson production via vector-boson fusion has been performed in the H -> gamma gamma channel using 139 fb(-1) of proton-proton collision data at root s = 13 TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The optimal observable method is used to probe the CP structure of interactions between the Higgs boson and electroweak gauge bosons, as described by an effective field theory. No sign of CP violation is observed in the data. Constraints are set on the parameters describing the strength of the CP-odd component in the coupling between the Higgs boson and the electroweak gauge bosons in two effective field theory bases: (d) over tilde in the HISZ basis and c(H (W) over tilde) in the Warsaw basis. The results presented are the most stringent constraints on CP violation in the coupling between Higgs and weak bosons. The 95% C.L. constraint on (d) over tilde is derived for the first time and the 95% C.L. constraint on c(H (W) over tilde) has been improved by a factor of 5 compared to the previous measurement.