PT Journal AU ATLAS Collaboration (Aad, Gea Amos, KR Aparisi Pozo, JA Bailey, AJ Cabrera Urban, S Cantero, J Cardillo, F Castillo Gimenez, V Costa, MJ Didenko Escobar, C Fiorini, L Fuster, J Garcia, C Garcia Navarro, JE Gomez Delegido, AJ Gonzalez de la Hoz, S Gonzalvo Rodriguez, GR Guerrero Rojas, JGR Higon-Rodriguez, E Lacasta, C Lozano Bahilo, JJ Marti-Garcia, S Martinez Agullo, P Miralles Lopez, M Mitsou, VA Monsonis Romero, L Moreno Llacer, M Munoz Perez, D Navarro-Gonzalez, J Poveda, J Prades Ibañez, A Rubio Jimenez, A Ruiz-Martinez, A Sabatini, P Salt, J Sanchez Sebastian, V Sayago Galvan, I Senthilkumar, V Soldevila, U Sanchez, J Torro Pastor, E Valero, A Valls Ferrer, JA Varriale, L Villaplana Perez, M Vos, M TI Search for doubly charged Higgs boson production in multi-lepton final states using 139 fb-1 of proton-proton collisions at √s=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector SO European Physical Journal C JI Eur. Phys. J. C PY 2023 BP 605 - 32pp VL 83 IS 7 DI 10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-11578-9 LA English AB A search for pair production of doubly charged Higgs bosons (H-+/-+/-), each decaying into a pair of prompt, isolated, and highly energetic leptons with the same electric charge, is presented. The search uses a proton-proton collision data sample at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb(-1) recorded by the ATLAS detector during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This analysis focuses on same-charge leptonic decays, H-+/-+/- -> l(+/-)l'(+/-) where l, l' = e, mu, tau, in two-, three-, and four-lepton channels, but only considers final states which include electrons or muons. No evidence of a signal is observed. Corresponding upper limits on the production cross-section of a doubly charged Higgs boson are derived, as a function of its mass m(H-+/-+/-), at 95% confidence level. Assuming that the branching ratios to each of the possible leptonic final states are equal, B(H-+/-+/- -> e(+/-)e(+/-)) = B(H-+/-+/- -> e(+/-)mu(+/-)) = B(H-+/-+/- -> mu(+/-)mu(+/-)) = B(H-+/-+/- -> e(+/-)tau(+/-)) = B(H-+/-+/- -> mu(+/-)tau(+/-)) = B(H-+/-+/- -> tau(+/-)tau(+/-)) = 1/6, the observed (expected) lower limit on the mass of a doubly charged Higgs boson is 1080GeV(1065 GeV) within the left-right symmetric type-II seesaw model, which is the strongest limit to date produced by the ATLAS Collaboration. Additionally, this paper provides the first direct test of the Zee-Babu neutrino mass model at the LHC, yielding an observed (expected) lower limit of m(H-+/-+/-) = 900 GeV (880 GeV). ER