Abstract: A search for direct top squark pair production resulting in events with either a same-flavour opposite-sign dilepton pair with invariant mass compatible with a Z boson or a pair of jets compatible with a Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson (h) is presented. Requirements on the missing transverse momentum, together with additional selections on leptons, jets, jets identified as originating from b-quarks are imposed to target the other decay products of the top squark pair. The analysis is performed using proton-proton collision data at root s = 13 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 20152016, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.1 fb(-1). No excess is observed in the data with respect to the SM predictions. The results are interpreted in two sets of models. In the first set, direct production of pairs of lighter top squarks ((t) over tilde (1)) with long decay chains involving Z or Higgs bosons is considered. The second set includes direct pair production of the heavier top squark pairs ((t) over tilde (2)) decaying via (t) over tilde (2) -> Z (t) over tilde (1) or (t) over tilde (2) -> h (t) over tilde (1). The results exclude at 95% confidence level (t) over tilde (2) and (t) over tilde (1) masses up to about 800 GeV, extending the exclusion region of supersymmetric parameter space covered by previous LHC searches.

Abstract: The results of a search for vector-like top quarks using events with exactly one lepton, at least four jets, and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search is optimised for pair production of vector-like top quarks in the Z(->nu nu) t + X decay channel. LHC pp collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of root S = 13 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector in 2015 and 2016 are used, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.1 fb(-1). No significant excess over the Standard Model expectation is seen and upper limits on the production cross-section of a vector-like T quark pair as a function of the T quark mass are derived. The observed (expected) 95% CL lower limits on the T mass are 870 GeV (890 GeV) for the weak-isospin singlet model, 1.05 TeV (1.06 TeV) for the weak-isospin doublet model and 1.16 TeV (1.17 TeV) for the pure Zt decay mode. Limits are also set on the mass as a function of the decay branching ratios, excluding large parts of the parameter space for masses below 1 TeV.

Abstract: A search for new phenomena in final states characterized by high jet multiplicity, an isolated lepton ( electron or muon) and either zero or at least three b-tagged jets is presented. The search uses 36.1 fb(-1) of root s = 13TeV proton-proton collision data collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in 2015 and 2016. The dominant sources of background are estimated using parameterized extrapolations, based on observables at medium jet multiplicity, to predict the b-tagged jet multiplicity distribution at the higher jet multiplicities used in the search. No significant excess over the Standard Model expectation is observed and 95% confidence-level limits are extracted constraining four simplified models of R-parity-violating supersymmetry that feature either gluino or top-squark pair production. The exclusion limits reach as high as 2.1TeV in gluino mass and 1.2TeV in top-squark mass in the models considered. In addition, an upper limit is set on the cross-section for Standard Model t (t) over bart (t) over bar production of 60 fb (6.5 x the Standard Model prediction) at 95% confidence level. Finally, model-independent limits are set on the contribution from new phenomena to the signal-region yields.