A measurement of off-shell Higgs boson production in the $H^*\to ZZ\to 4\ell$ decay channel is presented. The measurement uses 140 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider and supersedes the previous result in this decay channel using the same dataset. The data analysis is performed using a neural simulation-based inference method, which builds per-event likelihood ratios using neural networks. The observed (expected) off-shell Higgs boson production signal strength in the $ZZ\to 4\ell$ decay channel at 68% CL is $0.87^{+0.75}_{-0.54}$ ($1.00^{+1.04}_{-0.95}$). The evidence for off-shell Higgs boson production using the $ZZ\to 4\ell$ decay channel has an observed (expected) significance of $2.5\sigma$ ($1.3\sigma$). The expected result represents a significant improvement relative to that of the previous analysis of the same dataset, which obtained an expected significance of $0.5\sigma$. When combined with the most recent ATLAS measurement in the $ZZ\to 2\ell 2\nu$ decay channel, the evidence for off-shell Higgs boson production has an observed (expected) significance of $3.7\sigma$ ($2.4\sigma$). The off-shell measurements are combined with the measurement of on-shell Higgs boson production to obtain constraints on the Higgs boson total width. The observed (expected) value of the Higgs boson width at 68% CL is $4.3^{+2.7}_{-1.9}$ ($4.1^{+3.5}_{-3.4}$) MeV.
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 $139 \text{fb}^{-1}$ of proton$-$proton collision data recorded at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV at the LHC. Targeting sources of new physics which prefer final states containing $e^{+}\mu^{-}$ to $e^{-}\mu^{+}$, 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 $\lambda'_{231}$ is close to unity. Observations using the other selection exclude scalar leptoquarks with masses below 1880 GeV when $g_{\text{1R}}^{eu}=g_{\text{1R}}^{\mu c}=1$, at 95% confidence level. The limit on the coupling reduces to $g_{\text{1R}}^{eu}=g_{\text{1R}}^{\mu c}=0.46$ for a mass of 1420 GeV.
Heavy-flavour hadron production provides information about the transport properties and microscopic structure of the quark-gluon plasma created in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. A measurement of the muons from semileptonic decays of charm and bottom hadrons produced in Pb+Pb and $pp$ collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider is presented. The Pb+Pb data were collected in 2015 and 2018 with sampled integrated luminosities of $208~\mathrm{\mu b}^{-1}$ and $38~\mathrm{\mu b^{-1}}$, respectively, and $pp$ data with a sampled integrated luminosity of $1.17~\mathrm{pb}^{-1}$ were collected in 2017. Muons from heavy-flavour semileptonic decays are separated from the light-flavour hadronic background using the momentum imbalance between the inner detector and muon spectrometer measurements, and muons originating from charm and bottom decays are further separated via the muon track's transverse impact parameter. Differential yields in Pb+Pb collisions and differential cross sections in $pp$ collisions for such muons are measured as a function of muon transverse momentum from 4 GeV to 30 GeV in the absolute pseudorapidity interval $|\eta| < 2$. Nuclear modification factors for charm and bottom muons are presented as a function of muon transverse momentum in intervals of Pb+Pb collision centrality. The measured nuclear modification factors quantify a significant suppression of the yields of muons from decays of charm and bottom hadrons, with stronger effects for muons from charm hadron decays.
This article presents a search for a heavy charged Higgs boson produced in association with a top quark and a bottom quark, and decaying into a $W$ boson and a $125$ GeV Higgs boson $h$. The search is performed in final states with one charged lepton, missing transverse momentum, and jets using proton-proton collision data at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector during Run 2 of the LHC at CERN. This data set corresponds to a total integrated luminosity of 140 fb$^{-1}$. The search is conducted by examining the reconstructed invariant mass distribution of the $Wh$ candidates for evidence of a localised excess in the charged Higgs boson mass range from $250$ GeV to $3$ TeV. No significant excess is observed and 95% confidence-level upper limits between $2.8$ pb and $1.2$ fb are placed on the production cross-section times branching ratio for charged Higgs bosons decaying into $Wh$.
A search for exotic decays of the 125 GeV Higgs boson into a pair of new spin-0 particles, $H \to aa$, where one decays into a photon pair and the other into a $\tau$-lepton pair, is presented. Hadronic decays of the $\tau$-leptons are considered and reconstructed using a dedicated tagger for collimated $\tau$-lepton pairs. The search uses 140 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV recorded between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. The search is performed in the mass range of the $a$ boson between 10 GeV and 60 GeV. No significant excess of events is observed above the Standard Model background expectation. Model-independent upper limits at 95$\% $ confidence level are set on the branching ratio of the Higgs boson to the $\gamma\gamma\tau\tau$ final state, $\mathcal{B}(H\to aa\to \gamma\gamma\tau\tau)$, ranging from 0.2$\% $ to 2$\% $, depending on the $a$-boson mass hypothesis.
Charged Higgs bosons produced either in top-quark decays or in association with a top-quark, subsequently decaying via $H^{\pm} \to \tau^{\pm}\nu_{\tau}$, are searched for in 140 $\text{fb}^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector. Depending on whether the top-quark produced together with the $H^{\pm}$ decays hadronically or semi-leptonically, the search targets $\tau$+jets or $\tau$+lepton final states, in both cases with a $\tau$-lepton decaying into a neutrino and hadrons. No significant excess over the Standard Model background expectation is observed. For the mass range of $80 \leq m_{H^{\pm}} \leq 3000$ GeV, upper limits at 95% confidence level are set on the production cross-section of the charged Higgs boson times the branching fraction $\mathrm{\cal{B}}(H^{\pm} \to \tau^{\pm}\nu_{\tau})$ in the range 4.5 pb-0.4 fb. In the mass range 80-160 GeV, assuming the Standard Model cross-section for $t\bar{t}$ production, this corresponds to upper limits between 0.27% and 0.02% on $\mathrm{\cal{B}}(t\to bH^{\pm}) \times \mathrm{\cal{B}}(H^{\pm} \to \tau^{\pm}\nu_{\tau})$.
At the Fermilab Tevatron proton-antiproton ($p\bar{p}$) collider, Drell-Yan lepton pairs are produced in the process $p \bar{p} \rightarrow e^+e^- + X$ through an intermediate $\gamma^*/Z$ boson. The forward-backward asymmetry in the polar-angle distribution of the $e^-$ as a function of the $e^+e^-$-pair mass is used to obtain $\sin^2\theta^{\rm lept}_{\rm eff}$, the effective leptonic determination of the electroweak-mixing parameter $\sin^2\theta_W$. The measurement sample, recorded by the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF), corresponds to 9.4~fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity from $p\bar{p}$ collisions at a center-of-momentum energy of 1.96 TeV, and is the full CDF Run II data set. The value of $\sin^2\theta^{\rm lept}_{\rm eff}$ is found to be $0.23248 \pm 0.00053$. The combination with the previous CDF measurement based on $\mu^+\mu^-$ pairs yields $\sin^2\theta^{\rm lept}_{\rm eff} = 0.23221 \pm 0.00046$. This result, when interpreted within the specified context of the standard model assuming $\sin^2 \theta_W = 1 - M_W^2/M_Z^2$ and that the $W$- and $Z$-boson masses are on-shell, yields $\sin^2\theta_W = 0.22400 \pm 0.00045$, or equivalently a $W$-boson mass of $80.328 \pm 0.024 \;{\rm GeV}/c^2$.
Drell-Yan lepton pairs are produced in the process $p\bar{p} \rightarrow \mu^+\mu^- + X$ through an intermediate $\gamma^*/Z$ boson. The forward-backward asymmetry in the polar-angle distribution of the $\mu^-$ as a function of the invariant mass of the $\mu^+\mu^-$ pair is used to obtain the effective leptonic determination $\sin^2 \theta^{lept}_{eff}$ of the electroweak-mixing parameter $\sin^2 \theta_W$, from which the value of $\sin^2 \theta_W$ is derived assuming the standard model. The measurement sample, recorded by the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF), corresponds to 9.2 fb-1 of integrated luminosity from $p\bar{p}$ collisions at a center-of-momentum energy of 1.96 TeV, and is the full CDF Run II data set. The value of $\sin^2 \theta^{lept}_{eff}$ is found to be 0.2315 +- 0.0010, where statistical and systematic uncertainties are combined in quadrature. When interpreted within the context of the standard model using the on-shell renormalization scheme, where $\sin^2 \theta_W = 1 - M_W^2/M_Z^2$, the measurement yields $\sin^2 \theta_W$ = 0.2233 +- 0.0009, or equivalently a W-boson mass of 80.365 +- 0.047 GeV/c^2. The value of the W-boson mass is in agreement with previous determinations in electron-positron collisions and at the Tevatron collider.
The paper presents a search for supersymmetric particles produced in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV and decaying into final states with missing transverse momentum and jets originating from charm quarks. The data were taken with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN from 2015 to 2018 and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb$^{-1}$. No significant excess of events over the expected Standard Model background expectation is observed in optimized signal regions, and limits are set on the production cross-sections of the supersymmetric particles. Pair production of charm squarks or top squarks, each decaying into a charm quark and the lightest supersymmetric particle $\tilde{\chi}^0_1$, is excluded at 95% confidence level for squarks with masses up to 900 GeV for scenarios where the mass of $\tilde{\chi}^0_1$ is below 50 GeV. Additionally, the production of leptoquarks with masses up to 900 GeV is excluded for the scenario where up-type leptoquarks decay into a charm quark and a neutrino. Model-independent limits on cross-sections and event yields for processes beyond the Standard Model are also reported.
A search for the resonant production of a heavy scalar $X$ decaying into a Higgs boson and a new lighter scalar $S$, through the process $X \to S(\to bb) H(\to \gamma\gamma)$, where the two photons are consistent with the Higgs boson decay, is performed. The search is conducted using an integrated luminosity of 140 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The search is performed over the mass range 170 $\leq$$m_{X}$$\leq$ 1000 GeV and 15 $\leq$$m_{S}$$\leq$ 500 GeV. Parameterised neural networks are used to enhance the signal purity and to achieve continuous sensitivity in a domain of the ($m_{X}$, $m_{S}$) plane. No significant excess above the expected background is found and 95% CL upper limits are set on the cross section times branching ratio, ranging from 39 fb to 0.09 fb. The largest deviation from the background-only expectation occurs for ($m_{X}$, $m_{S}$) = (575, 200) GeV with a local (global) significance of 3.5 (2.0) standard deviations.
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