The paper presents studies of Bose-Einstein Correlations (BEC) for pairs of like-sign charged particles measured in the kinematic range $p_{\rm T}>$ 100 MeV and $|\eta|<$ 2.5 in proton--proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 0.9 and 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The integrated luminosities are approximately 7 $\mu$b$^{-1}$, 190 $\mu$b$^{-1}$ and 12.4 nb$^{-1}$ for 0.9 TeV, 7 TeV minimum-bias and 7 TeV high-multiplicity data samples, respectively. The multiplicity dependence of the BEC parameters characterizing the correlation strength and the correlation source size are investigated for charged-particle multiplicities of up to 240. A saturation effect in the multiplicity dependence of the correlation source size is observed using the high-multiplicity 7 TeV data sample. The dependence of the BEC parameters on the average transverse momentum of the particle pair is also investigated.
Light-by-light scattering ($\gamma\gamma\rightarrow\gamma\gamma$) is a quantum-mechanical process that is forbidden in the classical theory of electrodynamics. This reaction is accessible at the Large Hadron Collider thanks to the large electromagnetic field strengths generated by ultra-relativistic colliding lead (Pb) ions. Using 480 $\mu$b$^{-1}$ of Pb+Pb collision data recorded at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02 TeV by the ATLAS detector, the ATLAS Collaboration reports evidence for the $\gamma\gamma\rightarrow\gamma\gamma$ reaction. A total of 13 candidate events are observed with an expected background of 2.6$\pm$0.7 events. After background subtraction and analysis corrections, the fiducial cross section of the process $\textrm{Pb+Pb}\,(\gamma\gamma)\rightarrow \textrm{Pb}^{(\ast)}\textrm{+}\textrm{Pb}^{(\ast)}\,\gamma\gamma$, for photon transverse energy $E_{\mathrm{T}}>$3 GeV, photon absolute pseudorapidity $|\eta|<$2.4, diphoton invariant mass greater than 6 GeV, diphoton transverse momentum lower than 2 GeV and diphoton acoplanarity below 0.01, is measured to be 70 $\pm$ 24 (stat.) $\pm$ 17 (syst.) nb, which is in agreement with Standard Model predictions.
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