A search for the pair production of heavy leptons as predicted by the type-III seesaw mechanism is presented. The search uses proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to 139 fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity recorded by the ATLAS detector during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider. The analysis focuses on the final state with two light leptons (electrons or muons) of different flavour and charge combinations, with at least two jets and large missing transverse momentum. No significant excess over the Standard Model expectation is observed. The results are translated into exclusion limits on heavy-lepton masses, and the observed lower limit on the mass of the type-III seesaw heavy leptons is 790 GeV at 95% confidence level.
Cross-sections of the type-III seesaw process for mass points used in the analysis. Branching ratios into at least two leptons are presented with the corresponding effective cross-section.
Expected and observed 95 % CLs exclusion limits for the type-III seesaw process with the corresponding one- and two-standard-deviation bands, showing the 95 % CL upper limit on the cross-section.
Selection efficiencies in percentage relative to the events with at least two leptons for signal mass points used in the analysis. The efficiency is defined as the ratio of expected signal events in a signal region compared with the number of expected events produced, for integrated luminosity 139 fb$^{-1}$.
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