We report results on an elastic cross section measurement in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=510$ GeV, obtained with the Roman Pot setup of the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The elastic differential cross section is measured in the four-momentum transfer squared range $0.23 \leq -t \leq 0.67$ GeV$^2$. We find that a constant slope $B$ does not fit the data in the aforementioned $t$ range, and we obtain a much better fit using a second-order polynomial for $B(t)$. The $t$ dependence of $B$ is determined using six subintervals of $t$ in the STAR measured $t$ range, and is in good agreement with the phenomenological models. The measured elastic differential cross section $\mathrm{d}\sigma/\mathrm{dt}$ agrees well with the results obtained at $\sqrt{s} = 546$ GeV for proton--antiproton collisions by the UA4 experiment. We also determine that the integrated elastic cross section within the STAR $t$-range is $\sigma^\mathrm{fid}_\mathrm{el} = 462.1 \pm 0.9 (\mathrm{stat.}) \pm 1.1 (\mathrm {syst.}) \pm 11.6 (\mathrm {scale})$~$\mu\mathrm{b}$.

Three-body nuclear forces play an important role in the structure of nuclei and hypernuclei and are also incorporated in models to describe the dynamics of dense baryonic matter, such as in neutron stars. So far, only indirect measurements anchored to the binding energies of nuclei can be used to constrain the three-nucleon force, and if hyperons are considered, the scarce data on hypernuclei impose only weak constraints on the three-body forces. In this work, we present the first direct measurement of the p$-$p$-$p and p$-$p$-\Lambda$ systems in terms of three-particle correlation functions carried out for pp collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV. Three-particle cumulants are extracted from the correlation functions by applying the Kubo formalism, where the three-particle interaction contribution to these correlations can be isolated after subtracting the known two-body interaction terms. A negative cumulant is found for the p$-$p$-$p system, hinting to the presence of a residual three-body effect while for p$-$p$-\Lambda$ the cumulant is consistent with zero. This measurement demonstrates the accessibility of three-baryon correlations at the LHC.

Two-particle transverse momentum differential correlators, recently measured in Pb--Pb collisions at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), provide an additional tool to gain insights into particle production mechanisms and infer transport properties, such as the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density, of the medium created in Pb-Pb collisions. The longitudinal long-range correlations and the large azimuthal anisotropy measured at low transverse momenta in small collision systems, namely pp and p-Pb, at LHC energies resemble manifestations of collective behaviour. This suggests that locally equilibrated matter may be produced in these small collision systems, similar to what is observed in Pb-Pb collisions. In this work, the same two-particle transverse momentum differential correlators are exploited in pp and p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 7$ TeV and $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 5.02$ TeV, respectively, to seek evidence for viscous effects. Specifically, the strength and shape of the correlators are studied as a function of the produced particle multiplicity to identify evidence for longitudinal broadening that might reveal the presence of viscous effects in these smaller systems. The measured correlators and their evolution from pp and p--Pb to Pb--Pb collisions are additionally compared to predictions from Monte Carlo event generators, and the potential presence of viscous effects is discussed.

The interactions of kaons (K) and antikaons ($\mathrm{\overline{K}}$) with few nucleons (N) were studied so far using kaonic atom data and measurements of kaon production and interaction yields in nuclei. Some details of the three-body KNN and $\mathrm{\overline{K}}$NN dynamics are still not well understood, mainly due to the overlap with multi-nucleon interactions in nuclei. An alternative method to probe the dynamics of three-body systems with kaons is to study the final state interaction within triplet of particles emitted in pp collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, which are free from effects due to the presence of bound nucleons. This Letter reports the first femtoscopic study of p$-$p$-$K$^+$ and p$-$p$-$K$^-$ correlations measured in high-multiplicity pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV by the ALICE Collaboration. The analysis shows that the measured p$-$p$-$K$^+$ and p$-$p$-$K$^-$ correlation functions can be interpreted in terms of pairwise interactions in the triplets, indicating that the dynamics of such systems is dominated by the two-body interactions without significant contributions from three-body effects or bound states.

The production of $\pi^\pm$, ${\rm K}^\pm$, and $(\overline{\rm p})$p is measured in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV in different topological regions. Particle transverse momentum ($p_{\rm T}$) spectra are measured in the ``toward'', ``transverse'', and ``away'' angular regions defined with respect to the direction of the leading particle in the event. While the toward and away regions contain the fragmentation products of the near-side and away-side jets, respectively, the transverse region is dominated by particles from the Underlying Event (UE). The relative transverse activity classifier, $R_{\rm T}=N_{\rm T}/\langle N_{\rm T}\rangle$, is used to group events according to their UE activity, where $N_{\rm T}$ is the measured charged-particle multiplicity per event in the transverse region and $\langle N_{\rm T}\rangle$ is the mean value over all the analysed events. The first measurements of identified particle $p_{\rm T}$ spectra as a function of $R_{\rm T}$ in the three topological regions are reported. The yield of high transverse momentum particles relative to the $R_{\rm T}$-integrated measurement decreases with increasing $R_{\rm T}$ in both the toward and away regions, indicating that the softer UE dominates particle production as $R_{\rm T}$ increases and validating that $R_{\rm T}$ can be used to control the magnitude of the UE. Conversely, the spectral shapes in the transverse region harden significantly with increasing $R_{\rm T}$. This hardening follows a mass ordering, being more significant for heavier particles. The $p_{\rm T}$-differential particle ratios $({\rm p+\overline{p}})/(\pi^+ +\pi^-)$ and $({\rm K^+ +K^-})/(\pi^+ +\pi^-)$ in the low UE limit $(R_{\rm T}\rightarrow 0)$ approach expectations from Monte Carlo generators such as PYTHIA 8 with Monash 2013 tune and EPOS LHC, where the jet-fragmentation models have been tuned to reproduce ${\rm e^+ e^-}$ results.

The fractions of non-prompt (i.e. originating from beauty-hadron decays) D$^0$ and D$^+$ mesons with respect to the inclusive yield are measured as a function of the charged-particle multiplicity in proton$-$proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV with the ALICE detector at the LHC. The results are reported in intervals of transverse momentum ($p_{\rm T}$) and integrated in the range $1 < p_{\rm T} < 24$ GeV/$c$. The fraction of non-prompt D$^0$ and D$^+$ mesons is found to increase slightly as a function of $p_{\rm T}$ in all the measured multiplicity intervals, while no significant dependence on the charged-particle multiplicity is observed. In order to investigate the production and hadronisation mechanisms of charm and beauty quarks, the results are compared to PYTHIA 8 as well as EPOS 3 and EPOS 4 Monte Carlo simulations, and to calculations based on the colour glass condensate including three-pomeron fusion.

The measurement of the production of deuterons, tritons and $^{3}\mathrm{He}$ and their antiparticles in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} = 5.02$ TeV is presented in this article. The measurements are carried out at midrapidity ($|y| < $ 0.5) as a function of collision centrality using the ALICE detector. The $p_{\rm T}$-integrated yields, the coalescence parameters and the ratios to protons and antiprotons are reported and compared with nucleosynthesis models. The comparison of these results in different collision systems at different centre-of-mass collision energies reveals a suppression of nucleus production in small systems. In the Statistical Hadronisation Model framework, this can be explained by a small correlation volume where the baryon number is conserved, as already shown in previous fluctuation analyses. However, a different size of the correlation volume is required to describe the proton yields in the same data sets. The coalescence model can describe this suppression by the fact that the wave functions of the nuclei are large and the fireball size starts to become comparable and even much smaller than the actual nucleus at low multiplicities.

A search for exclusive two-photon production via photon exchange in proton-proton collisions, pp $\to$ p$\gamma\gamma$p with intact protons, is presented. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 9.4 fb$^{-1}$ collected in 2016 using the CMS and TOTEM detectors at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV at the LHC. Events are selected with a diphoton invariant mass above 350 GeV and with both protons intact in the final state, to reduce backgrounds from strong interactions. The events of interest are those where the invariant mass and rapidity calculated from the momentum losses of the forward-moving protons matches the mass and rapidity of the central, two-photon system. No events are found that satisfy this condition. Interpreting this result in an effective dimension-8 extension of the standard model, the first limits are set on the two anomalous four-photon coupling parameters. If the other parameter is constrained to its standard model value, the limits at 95% CL are $\lvert\zeta_1\rvert$ $\lt$ 2.9 $\times$ 10$^{-13}$ GeV$^{-4}$ and $\lvert\zeta_2\rvert$ $\lt$ 6.0 $\times$ 10$^{-13}$ GeV$^{-4}$.

The azimuthal anisotropy of particles associated with jets (jet particles) at midrapidity is measured for the first time in p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV down to transverse momentum ($p_{\rm T}$) of 0.5 GeV/$c$ and 2 GeV/$c$, respectively, with ALICE. The results obtained in p-Pb collisions are based on a novel three-particle correlation technique. The azimuthal anisotropy coefficient $v_2$ in high-multiplicity p-Pb collisions is positive, with a significance reaching 6.8$\sigma$ at low $p_{\rm T}$, and its magnitude is smaller than in semicentral Pb-Pb collisions. In contrast to the measurements in Pb-Pb collisions, the $v_2$ coefficient is also found independent of $p_{\rm T}$ within uncertainties. Comparisons with the inclusive charged-particle $v_2$ and with AMPT calculations are discussed. The predictions suggest that parton interactions play an important role in generating a non-zero jet-particle $v_2$ in p-Pb collisions, even though they overestimate the reported measurement. These observations shed new insights on the understanding of the origin of the collective behaviour of jet particles in small systems such as p-Pb collisions, and provide significant stringent new constraints to models.

A search for nonresonant Higgs boson pair production in the $b\bar{b}b\bar{b}$ final state is presented. The analysis uses 126 fb$^{-1}$ of $pp$ collision data at $\sqrt{s}={13}$ TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider, and targets both the gluon-gluon fusion and vector-boson fusion production modes. No evidence of the signal is found and the observed (expected) upper limit on the cross-section for nonresonant Higgs boson pair production is determined to be 5.4 (8.1) times the Standard Model predicted cross-section at 95% confidence level. Constraints are placed on modifiers to the $HHH$ and $HHVV$ couplings. The observed (expected) $2\sigma$ constraints on the $HHH$ coupling modifier, $\kappa_\lambda$, are determined to be $[-3.5, 11.3]$ ($[-5.4, 11.4]$), while the corresponding constraints for the $HHVV$ coupling modifier, $\kappa_{2V}$, are $[-0.0, 2.1]$ ($[-0.1, 2.1]$). In addition, constraints on relevant coefficients are derived in the context of the Standard Model effective field theory and Higgs effective field theory, and upper limits on the $HH$ production cross-section are placed in seven Higgs effective field theory benchmark scenarios.