This letter reports a measurement of the muon charge asymmetry from W Boson produced in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The asymmetry is measured in the W Boson to muon decay mode as a function of the muon pseudorapidity using a data sample corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 31 pb-1. The results are compared to predictions based on next-to-leading order calculations with various parton distribution functions. This measurement provides information on the u and d quark momentum fractions in the proton.
Hitherto unobserved long-lived massive particles with electric and/or colour charge are predicted by a range of theories which extend the Standard Model. In this paper a search is performed at the ATLAS experiment for slow-moving charged particles produced in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV centre-of-mass energy at the LHC, using a data-set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 34 pb-1. No deviations from Standard Model expectations are found. This result is interpreted in a framework of supersymmetry models in which coloured sparticles can hadronise into long-lived bound hadronic states, termed R-hadrons, and 95% CL limits are set on the production cross-sections of squarks and gluinos. The influence of R-hadron interactions in matter was studied using a number of different models, and lower mass limits for stable sbottoms and stops are found to be 294 and 309 GeV respectively. The lower mass limit for a stable gluino lies in the range from 562 to 586 GeV depending on the model assumed. Each of these constraints is the most stringent to date.
A search for the decay of neutral, weakly interacting, long-lived particles using data collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC is presented. The analysis in this paper uses 36.1 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV recorded in 2015-2016. The search employs techniques for reconstructing vertices of long-lived particles decaying into jets in the muon spectrometer exploiting a two vertex strategy and a novel technique that requires only one vertex in association with additional activity in the detector that improves the sensitivity for longer lifetimes. The observed numbers of events are consistent with the expected background and limits for several benchmark signals are determined.
Endcap Muon RoI Cluster trigger efficiencies (in %) for baryogenesis $\chi \rightarrow \tau\tau\nu$ benchmark samples ($m_{h}=125$ GeV). The trigger efficiency is defined as the fraction of LLPs selected by the Muon RoI Cluster trigger as a function of the LLP decay position. The trigger is efficient for hadronic decays of LLPs that occur anywhere from the outer regions of the HCal to the middle station of the MS. These efficiencies are obtained from the subset of events with only a single LLP decay in the muon spectrometer in order to ensure that the result of the trigger is due to a single burst of MS activity. The uncertainties shown are statistical only. The relative differences in efficiencies of the benchmark samples are a result of the different kinematics.
This paper presents a measurement of jet fragmentation functions in 0.49 nb$^{-1}$ of Pb+Pb collisions and 25 pb$^{-1}$ of $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5.02$ TeV collected in 2015 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. These measurements provide insight into the jet quenching process in the quark-gluon plasma created in the aftermath of ultra-relativistic collisions between two nuclei. The modifications to the jet fragmentation functions are quantified by dividing the measurements in Pb+Pb collisions by baseline measurements in $pp$ collisions. This ratio is studied as a function of the transverse momentum of the jet, the jet rapidity, and the centrality of the collision. In both collision systems, the jet fragmentation functions are measured for jets with transverse momentum between 126 GeV and 398 GeV and with an absolute value of jet rapidity less than 2.1. An enhancement of particles carrying a small fraction of the jet momentum is observed, which increases with centrality and with increasing jet transverse momentum. Yields of particles carrying a very large fraction of the jet momentum are also observed to be enhanced. Between these two enhancements of the fragmentation functions a suppression of particles carrying an intermediate fraction of the jet momentum is observed in Pb+Pb collisions. A small dependence of the modifications on jet rapidity is observed.
The ratio of the D(z) in different centrality intervals in PbPb and in pp for 398.10 < pTjet < 501.18 and 0.0 < eta < 0.3.
The ratio of the D(z) in different centrality intervals in PbPb and in pp for 126.00 < pTjet < 158.49 and 0.0 < eta < 0.3.
Measurements of the azimuthal anisotropy in lead-lead collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}} = 5.02$ TeV are presented using a data sample corresponding to 0.49 $\mathrm{nb}^{-1}$ integrated luminosity collected by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC in 2015. The recorded minimum-bias sample is enhanced by triggers for "ultra-central" collisions, providing an opportunity to perform detailed study of flow harmonics in the regime where the initial state is dominated by fluctuations. The anisotropy of the charged-particle azimuthal angle distributions is characterized by the Fourier coefficients, $v_{2}-v_{7}$, which are measured using the two-particle correlation, scalar-product and event-plane methods. The goal of the paper is to provide measurements of the differential as well as integrated flow harmonics $v_{n}$ over wide ranges of the transverse momentum, 0.5 $
The V3 harmonic measured with the scalar product method as a funtion of transverse momentum in centrality bin 70-80%
A search is presented for the pair production of heavy vector-like quarks, $T\bar T$ or $B\bar B$, that decay into final states with jets and no reconstructed leptons. Jets in the final state are classified using a deep neural network as arising from hadronically decaying $W/Z$ bosons, Higgs bosons, top quarks, or background. The analysis uses data from the ATLAS experiment corresponding to 36.1 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions with a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV delivered by the Large Hadron Collider in 2015 and 2016. No significant deviation from the Standard Model expectation is observed. Results are interpreted assuming the vector-like quarks decay into a Standard Model boson and a third-generation-quark, $T\rightarrow Wb,Ht,Zt$ or $B\rightarrow Wt,Hb,Zb$, for a variety of branching ratios. At 95% confidence level, the observed (expected) lower limit on the vector-like $B$-quark mass for a weak-isospin doublet ($B, Y$) is 950 (890) GeV, and the lower limits on the masses for the pure decays $B\rightarrow Hb$ and $T\rightarrow Ht$, where these results are strongest, are 1010 (970) GeV and 1010 (1010) GeV, respectively.
This paper presents a search for massive charged long-lived particles produced in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV at the LHC using the ATLAS experiment. The dataset used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb$^{-1}$. Many extensions of the Standard Model predict the existence of massive charged long-lived particles, such as $R$-hadrons. These massive particles are expected to be produced with a velocity significantly below the speed of light, and therefore to have a specific ionization higher than any Standard Model particle of unit charge at high momenta. The Pixel subsystem of the ATLAS detector is used to measure the ionization energy loss of reconstructed charged particles and to search for such highly ionizing particles. The search presented here has much greater sensitivity than a similar search performed using the ATLAS detector in the $\sqrt{s}=$ 8 TeV dataset, thanks to the increase in expected signal cross-section due to the higher center-of-mass energy of collisions, to an upgraded detector with a new silicon layer close to the interaction point, and to analysis improvements. No significant deviation from Standard Model background expectations is observed, and lifetime-dependent upper limits on $R$-hadron production cross-sections and masses are set. Gluino $R$-hadrons with lifetimes above 0.4 ns and decaying to $q\bar{q}$ plus a 100 GeV neutralino are excluded at the 95% confidence level, with lower mass limit ranging between 740 GeV and 1590 GeV. In the case of stable $R$-hadrons the lower mass limit at the 95% confidence level is 1570 GeV.
Making use of 36 pb^-1 of proton-proton collision data at sqrt{s} = 7 TeV, the ATLAS Collaboration has performed a search for diphoton events with large missing transverse energy. Observing no excess of events above the Standard Model prediction, a 95% Confidence Level (CL) upper limit is set on the cross section for new physics of sigma < 0.38 - 0.65 pb in the context of a generalised model of gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking (GGM) with a bino-like lightest neutralino, and of sigma < 0.18 - 0.23 pb in the context of a specific model with one universal extra dimension (UED). A 95 % CL lower limit of 560 GeV, for bino masses above 50 GeV, is set on the GGM gluino mass, while a lower limit of 1/R > 961 GeV is set on the UED compactification radius R. These limits provide the most stringent tests of these models to date.
A search has been performed for photons originating in the decay of a neutral long-lived particle, exploiting the capabilities of the ATLAS electromagnetic calorimeter to make precise measurements of the flight direction of photons, as well as the calorimeter's excellent time resolution. The search has been made in the diphoton plus missing transverse energy final state, using the full data sample of 4.8/fb of 7 TeV proton-proton collisions collected in 2011 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. No excess is observed above the background expected from Standard Model processes. The results are used to set exclusion limits in the context of Gauge Mediated Supersymmetry Breaking models, with the lightest neutralino being the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle and decaying with a lifetime in excess of 0.25 ns into a photon and a gravitino.
The centrality dependence of the mean charged-particle multiplicity as a function of pseudorapidity is measured in approximately 1 $\mu$b$^{-1}$ of proton--lead collisions at a nucleon--nucleon centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s_{_{\rm{NN}}}} = 5.02$ TeV using the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Charged particles with absolute pseudorapidity less than 2.7 are reconstructed using the ATLAS pixel detector. The $p$+Pb collision centrality is characterised by the total transverse energy measured in the Pb-going direction of the forward calorimeter. The charged-particle pseudorapidity distributions are found to vary strongly with centrality, with an increasing asymmetry between the proton-going and Pb-going directions as the collisions become more central. Three different estimations of the number of nucleons participating in the $p$+Pb collision have been carried out using the Glauber model as well as two Glauber--Gribov inspired extensions to the Glauber model. Charged-particle multiplicities per participant pair are found to vary differently for these three models, highlighting the importance of including colour fluctuations in nucleon--nucleon collisions in the modelling of the initial state of $p$+Pb collisions.