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: This paper presents a measurement of the electroweak production of two jets in association with a Z gamma pair, with the Z boson decaying into two neutrinos. It also presents a search for invisible or partially invisible decays of a Higgs boson with a mass of 125 GeV produced through vectorboson fusion with a photon in the final state. These results use data from LHC proton-proton collisions at root s = 13 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector and corresponding to an integated luminosity of 139 fb(-1). The event signature, shared by all benchmark processes considered for the measurements and searches, is characterized by a significant amount of unbalanced transverse momentum and a photon in the final state, in addition to a pair of forward jets. Electroweak Z gamma production in association with two jets is observed in this final state with a significance of 5.2 (5.1 expected) standard deviations. The measured fiducial cross-section for this process is 1.31 +/- 0.29 fb. An observed (expected) upper limit of 0.37 (0.34(-0.10)(+0.15)) at 95% confidence level is set on the branching ratio of a 125 GeV Higgs boson to invisible particles, assuming the Standard Model production cross-section. The signature is also interpreted in the context of decays of a Higgs boson into a photon and a dark photon. An observed (expected) 95% CL upper limit on the branching ratio for this decay is set at 0.018 (0.017(-0.005)(+0.007)), assuming the Standard Model production cross-section for a 125 GeV Higgs boson.

Abstract: A search is presented for the production of a single top quark via left-handed flavour-changing neutralcurrent (FCNC) interactions of a top quark, a gluon and an up or charm quark. Two production processes are considered: u + g -> t and c + g -> t. The analysis is based on proton-proton collision data taken at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The data set corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb(-1). Events with exactly one electron or muon, exactly one b-tagged jet and missing transverse momentum are selected, resembling the decay products of a singly produced top quark. Neural networks based on kinematic variables differentiate between events from the two signal processes and events from background processes. The measured data are consistent with the background-only hypothesis, and limits are set on the production cross-sections of the signal processes: sigma(u + g -> t) x B(t -> Wb) x B(W -> l nu) < 3.0 pb and sigma(c + g -> t) xB(t -> Wb) xB(W -> l nu) < 4.7pb at the 95% confidence level, with B(W -> l nu) = 0.325 being the sum of branching ratios of all three leptonic decay modes of the W boson. Based on the framework of an effective field theory, the cross-section limits are translated into limits on the strengths of the tug and tcg couplings occurring in the theory: vertical bar C-uG(ut)vertical bar Lambda(2) < 0.057 TeV-2 and vertical bar C-uG(ct)vertical bar Lambda(2) < 0.14 TeV-2. These bounds correspond to limits on the branching ratios of FCNC-induced top-quark decays: B(t -> u + g) < 0.61 x 10(-4) and B(t -> c + g) < 3.7 x 10(-4).

Abstract: This paper presents an analysis at next-to-next-to-leading order in the theory of quantum chromodynamics for the determination of a new set of proton parton distribution functions using diverse measurements in pp collisions at root s = 7, 8 and 13 TeV, performed by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, together with deep inelastic scattering data from ep collisions at the HERA collider. The ATLAS data sets considered are differential cross-section measurements of inclusive W-+/- and Z/gamma* boson production, W-+/- and Z boson production in association with jets, t (t) over bar production, inclusive jet production and direct photon production. In the analysis, particular attention is paid to the correlation of systematic uncertainties within and between the various ATLAS data sets and to the impact of model, theoretical and parameterisation uncertainties. The resulting set of parton distribution functions is called ATLASpdf21.

Abstract: This paper presents a measurement of b-jet production in Pb+Pb and pp collisions at root s(NN) = 5.02 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurement uses 260 pb(-1) of pp collisions collected in 2017 and 1.4 nb(-1) of Pb+Pb collisions collected in 2018. In both collision systems, jets are reconstructed via the anti-kt algorithm. The b-jets are identified from a sample of jets containing muons from the semileptonic decay of b-quarks using template fits of the muon momentum relative to the jet axis. In pp collisions, b-jets are reconstructed for radius parameters R=0.2 and R=0.4, and only R=0.2 jets are used in Pb+Pb collisions. For comparison, inclusive R=0.2 jets are also measured using 1.7 nb(-1) of Pb+Pb collisions collected in 2018 and the same pp collision data as the b-jet measurement. The nuclear modification factor, RAA, is calculated for both b-jets and inclusive jets with R=0.2 over the transverse momentum range of 80-290 GeV. The nuclear modification factor for b-jets decreases from peripheral to central collisions. The ratio of the b-jet RAA to inclusive jet RAA is also presented and suggests that the RAA for b-jets is larger than that for inclusive jets in central Pb+Pb collisions. The measurements are compared with theoretical calculations and suggest a role for mass and colour-charge effects in partonic energy loss in heavy-ion collisions.