Electroweak symmetry breaking explains the origin of the masses of elementary particles through their interactions with the Higgs field. Besides the measurements of the Higgs boson properties, the study of the scattering of massive vector bosons with spin one allows the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking to be probed. Among all processes related to vector-boson scattering, the electroweak production of two jets and a $Z$-boson pair is a rare and important one. Here we report the observation of this process from proton-proton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139/fb recorded at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. We consider two different final states originating from the decays of the $Z$-boson pair - one containing four charged leptons and the other containing two charged leptons and two neutrinos. The hypothesis of no electroweak production is rejected with a statistical significance of 5.7 $\sigma$, and the measured cross-section for electroweak production is consistent with the standard model prediction. In addition, we report cross-sections for inclusive production of a $Z$-boson pair and two jets for the two final states.
Measured and predicted fiducial cross-sections in both the lllljj and ll$\nu\nu$jj channels for the inclusive ZZjj processes. Uncertainties due to different sources are presented
Signal strength and significance of EW ZZjj processes
Signal strength and significance of EW ZZjj processes
A search for heavy right-handed Majorana or Dirac neutrinos $N_R$ and heavy right-handed gauge bosons $W_R$ is performed in events with a pair of energetic electrons or muons, with the same or opposite electric charge, and two energetic jets. The events are selected from $pp$ collision data with an integrated luminosity of 36.1 fb$^{-1}$ collected by the ATLAS detector at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV. No significant deviations from the Standard Model are observed. The results are interpreted within the theoretical framework of a left-right symmetric model and lower limits are set on masses in the heavy right-handed $W$ boson and neutrino mass plane. The excluded region extends to $m_{W_R}=4.7$ TeV for both Majorana and Dirac $N_R$ neutrinos.
Expected 95% CL exclusion contour in the $m_{W_R}–m_{N_R}$ plane for the Majorana $N_R$ neutrino $ee$ channel.
Observed 95% CL exclusion contour in the $m_{W_R}–m_{N_R}$ plane for the Majorana $N_R$ neutrino $ee$ channel.
Observed and expected 95% CL exclusion, for the tested signal mass hypotheses in the $m_{W_R}–m_{N_R}$ plane, for the Majorana $N_R$ neutrino $ee$ channel.
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