This Letter presents the measurement of the fiducial and differential cross-sections of the electroweak production of a $Z \gamma$ pair in association with two jets. The analysis uses 140 fb$^{-1}$ of LHC proton-proton collision data taken at $\sqrt{s}$=13 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector during the years 2015-2018. Events with a $Z$ boson candidate decaying into either an $e^+e^-$ or $\mu^+ \mu^-$ pair, a photon and two jets are selected. The electroweak component is extracted by requiring a large dijet invariant mass and a large rapidity gap between the two jets and is measured with an observed and expected significance well above five standard deviations. The fiducial $pp \rightarrow Z \gamma jj$ cross-section for the electroweak production is measured to be 3.6 $\pm$ 0.5 fb. The total fiducial cross-section that also includes contributions where the jets arise from strong interactions is measured to be $16.8^{+2.0}_{-1.8}$ fb. The results are consistent with the Standard Model predictions. Differential cross-sections are also measured using the same events and are compared with parton-shower Monte Carlo simulations. Good agreement is observed between data and predictions.
Post-fit mjj distributions in the mjj>500 GeV SR. The uncertainty band around the expectation includes all systematic uncertainties (including MC statistical uncertainty) and takes into account their correlations as obtained from the fit. The error bar around the data points represents the data statistical uncertainty. Events beyond the upper limit of the histogram are included in the last bin.
Post-fit mjj distributions in the mjj>500 GeV CR. The uncertainty band around the expectation includes all systematic uncertainties (including MC statistical uncertainty) and takes into account their correlations as obtained from the fit. The error bar around the data points represents the data statistical uncertainty. Events beyond the upper limit of the histogram are included in the last bin.
Post-fit mjj distributions in the mjj>150 GeV Extended SR. The uncertainty band around the expectation includes all systematic uncertainties (including MC statistical uncertainty) and takes into account their correlations as obtained from the fit. The error bar around the data points represents the data statistical uncertainty. Events beyond the upper limit of the histogram are included in the last bin.
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