The ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider is used to search for high-mass resonances decaying to an electron-positron pair or a muon-antimuon pair. The search is sensitive to heavy neutral Z' gauge bosons, Randall-Sundrum gravitons, Z* bosons, techni-mesons, Kaluza-Klein Z/gamma bosons, and bosons predicted by Torsion models. Results are presented based on an analysis of pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.9/fb in the dielectron channel and 5.0/fb in the dimuon channel. A Z' boson with Standard Model-like couplings is excluded at 95 percent confidence level for masses below 2.22 TeV. A Randall-Sundrum graviton with coupling k/Mbar = 0.1 is excluded at 95 percent confidence level for masses below 2.16 TeV. Limits on the other models are also presented, including Technicolor and Minimal Z' Models.
The inclusive J/psi production cross-section and fraction of J/psi mesons produced in B-hadron decays are measured in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, as a function of the transverse momentum and rapidity of the J/psi, using 2.3 pb-1 of integrated luminosity. The cross-section is measured from a minimum pT of 1 GeV to a maximum of 70 GeV and for rapidities within |y| < 2.4 giving the widest reach of any measurement of J/psi production to date. The differential production cross-sections of prompt and non-prompt J/psi are separately determined and are compared to Colour Singlet NNLO*, Colour Evaporation Model, and FONLL predictions.
We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.
A measurement of the Z/gamma* transverse momentum (p_T^Z)) distribution in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV is presented using Z/gamma*->e+e- and Z/gamma*->mu+mu- decays collected with the ATLAS detector in data sets with integrated luminosities of 35 pb^-1 and 40 pb^-1, respectively. The normalized differential cross sections are measured separately for electron and muon decay channels as well as for their combination up to p_T^Z of 350 GeV for invariant dilepton masses 66 GeV<m_ll<116 GeV. The measurement is compared to predictions of perturbative QCD and various event generators. The prediction of resummed QCD combined with fixed order perturbative QCD is found to be in good agreement with the data.
The results of a search for pair production of the lighter scalar partners of top quarks in 2.05 fb-1 of pp collisions at sqrt(s) =7 TeV using the ATLAS experiment at the LHC are reported. Scalar top quarks are searched for in events with two same flavour opposite-sign leptons (electrons or muons) with invariant mass consistent with the Z boson mass, large missing transverse momentum and jets in the final state. At least one of the jets is identified as originating from a b-quark. No excess over Standard Model expectations is found. The results are interpreted in the framework of R-parity conserving, gauge mediated Supersymmetry breaking `natural' scenarios, where the neutralino is the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle. Scalar top quark masses up to 310 GeV are excluded for the lightest neutralino mass between 115 GeV and 230 GeV at 95% confidence level, reaching an exclusion of the scalar top quark mass of 330 GeV for the lightest neutralino mass of 190 GeV. Scalar top quark masses below 240 GeV are excluded for all values of the lightest neutralino mass above the Z boson mass.
A measurement of the b-hadron production cross section in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV is presented. The dataset, corresponding to 85 inverse nanobarns, was recorded with the CMS experiment at the LHC using a low-threshold single-muon trigger. Events are selected by the presence of a muon with transverse momentum greater than 6 GeV with respect to the beam direction and pseudorapidity less than 2.1. The transverse momentum of the muon with respect to the closest jet discriminates events containing b hadrons from background. The inclusive b-hadron production cross section is presented as a function of muon transverse momentum and pseudorapidity. The measured total cross section in the kinematic acceptance is sigma(pp to b+X to mu + X') =1.32 +/- 0.01 (stat) +/- 0.30 (syst) +/- 0.15 (lumi) microbarns.
This Letter presents a search for a heavy neutral particle decaying into an opposite-sign different-flavor dilepton pair, $e^\pm \mu^\mp$, $e^\pm \tau^\mp$, or $\mu^\pm \tau^\mp$ using 20.3 fb$^{-1}$ of $pp$ collision data at $\sqrt{s} = 8$ TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The numbers of observed candidate events are compatible with the Standard Model expectations. Limits are set on the cross section of new phenomena in two scenarios: the production of $\tilde{\nu}_{\tau}$ in $R$-parity-violating supersymmetric models and the production of a lepton-flavor-violating $Z'$ vector boson.
This paper describes a measurement of the $Z/\gamma^*$ boson transverse momentum spectrum using ATLAS proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV at the LHC. The measurement is performed in the $Z/\gamma^* \rightarrow e^+e^-$ and $Z/\gamma^* \rightarrow \mu^+\mu^-$ channels, using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.7 fb$^{-1}$. Normalized differential cross sections as a function of the $Z/\gamma^*$ boson transverse momentum are measured for transverse momenta up to 800 GeV. The measurement is performed inclusively for $Z/\gamma^*$ rapidities up to 2.4, as well as in three rapidity bins. The channel results are combined, compared to perturbative and resummed QCD calculations and used to constrain the parton shower parameters of Monte Carlo generators.
The differential cross sections for the production of photons in Z to mu+ mu- gamma decays are presented as a function of the transverse energy of the photon and its separation from the nearest muon. The data for these measurements were collected with the CMS detector and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 4.7 inverse femtobarns of pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV delivered by the CERN LHC. The cross sections are compared to simulations with POWHEG and PYTHIA, where PYTHIA is used to simulate parton showers and final-state photons. These simulations match the data to better than 5%.
A search for Z bosons in the mu^+mu^- decay channel has been performed in PbPb collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre of mass energy = 2.76 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC, in a 7.2 inverse microbarn data sample. The number of opposite-sign muon pairs observed in the 60--120 GeV/c2 invariant mass range is 39, corresponding to a yield per unit of rapidity (y) and per minimum bias event of (33.8 ± 5.5 (stat) ± 4.4 (syst)) 10^{-8}, in the |y|<2.0 range. Rapidity, transverse momentum, and centrality dependencies are also measured. The results agree with next-to-leading order QCD calculations, scaled by the number of incoherent nucleon-nucleon collisions.
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