Search for invisible particles produced in association with single-top-quarks in proton-proton collisions at s√ = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search for the production of single-top-quarks in association with missing energy is performed in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of s√ = 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider using data collected in 2012, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb−1. In this search, the W boson from the top quark is required to decay into an electron or a muon and a neutrino. No deviation from the Standard Model prediction is observed, and upper limits are set on the production cross-section for resonant and non-resonant production of an invisible exotic state in association with a right-handed top quark. In the case of resonant production, for a spin-0 resonance with a mass of 500 GeV, an effective coupling strength above 0.15 is excluded at 95% confidence level for the top quark and an invisible spin-1/2 state with mass between 0 GeV and 100 GeV. In the case of non-resonant production, an effective coupling strength above 0.2 is excluded at 95% confidence level for the top quark and an invisible spin-1 state with mass between 0 GeV and 657 GeV.

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at s√=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of s√=8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT>120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between EmissT>150 GeV and EmissT>700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, and production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presented.

Search for pair-produced long-lived neutral particles decaying in the ATLAS hadronic calorimeter in pp collisions at s√ = 8 TeV

The ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is used to search for the decay of a scalar boson to a pair of long-lived particles, neutral under the Standard Model gauge group, in 20.3 fb−1 of data collected in proton--proton collisions at s√ = 8 TeV. This search is sensitive to long-lived particles that decay to Standard Model particles producing jets at the outer edge of the ATLAS electromagnetic calorimeter or inside the hadronic calorimeter. No significant excess of events is observed. Limits are reported on the product of the scalar boson production cross section times branching ratio into long-lived neutral particles as a function of the proper lifetime of the particles. Limits are reported for boson masses from 100 GeV to 900 GeV, and a long-lived neutral particle mass from 10 GeV to 150 GeV.

Search for production of WW/WZ resonances decaying to a lepton, neutrino and jets in pp collisions at s√ = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search is presented for a narrow diboson resonances decaying to WW or WZ in the final state where one W boson decays leptonically (to an electron or a muon plus a neutrino) and the other W/Z boson decays hadronically. The analysis is performed using an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb−1 of pp collisions at s√ = 8 TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. No evidence for resonant diboson production is observed, and resonance masses below 700 GeV and 1490 GeV are excluded at 95% confidence level for the spin-2 Randall-Sundrum bulk graviton G∗ with coupling constant of 1.0 and the extended gauge model W′ boson respectively.

Search for resonant diboson production in the ℓℓqq¯ final state in pp collisions at s√=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper reports on a search for narrow resonances in diboson production in the ℓℓqq¯ final state using pp collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20fb−1 collected at s√=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. No significant excess of data events over the Standard Model expectation is observed. Upper limits at the 95% confidence level are set on the production cross section times branching ratio for Kaluza--Klein gravitons predicted by the Randall--Sundrum model and for Extended Gauge Model W' bosons. These results lead to the exclusion of mass values below 740 GeV and 1590 GeV for the graviton and W' boson respectively.

Search for W′→tb→qqbb Decays in pp Collisions at s√ = 8 TeV with the ATLAS Detector

A search for a massive W′ gauge boson is performed with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of s√ = 8 TeV, corresponding to 20.3 fb−1 of integrated luminosity. This analysis is done in the W′→tb→qqbb mode for W′ masses above 1.5 TeV, where the W′ decay products are highly boosted. Novel jet substructure techniques are used to identify jets from high-momentum top quarks to ensure high sensitivity, independent of W′ mass, up to 3 TeV; b-tagging is also used to identify jets originating from b-quarks. The data are consistent with Standard Model background-only expectations, and upper limits at 95% confidence level are set on the W′→tb cross section times branching ratio ranging from 0.16 pb to 0.33 pb for left-handed W′ bosons, and ranging from 0.10 pb to 0.21 pb for W′ bosons with purely right-handed couplings. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set on the W′-boson coupling to tb as a function of the W′ mass using an effective field theory approach, which is independent of details of particular models predicting a W′ boson.

Searches for heavy long-lived charged particles with the ATLAS detector in proton--proton collisions at s√ = 8 TeV

Searches for heavy long-lived charged particles are performed using a data sample of 19.8 fb−1 from proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of s√ = 8 TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. No excess is observed above the estimated background and limits are placed on the mass of long-lived particles in various supersymmetric models. Long-lived tau sleptons in models with gauge-mediated symmetry breaking are excluded up to masses between 440 and 385 GeV for tan(beta) between 10 and 50, with a 290 GeV limit in the case where only direct tau slepton production is considered. In the context of simplified LeptoSUSY models, where sleptons are stable and have a mass of 300 GeV, squark and gluino masses are excluded up to a mass of 1500 and 1360 GeV, respectively. Directly produced charginos, in simplified models where they are nearly degenerate to the lightest neutralino, are excluded up to a mass of 620 GeV. R-hadrons, composites containing a gluino, bottom squark or top squark, are excluded up to a mass of 1270, 845 and 900 GeV, respectively, using the full detector; and up to a mass of 1260, 835 and 870 GeV using an approach disregarding information from the muon spectrometer.

Identification and energy calibration of hadronically decaying tau leptons with the ATLAS experiment in pp collisions at s√=8 TeV

This paper describes the trigger and offline reconstruction, identification and energy calibration algorithms for hadronic decays of tau leptons employed for the data collected from pp collisions in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC center-of-mass energy s√ = 8 TeV. The performance of these algorithms is measured in most cases with Z decays to tau leptons using the full 2012 dataset, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb−1. An uncertainty on the offline reconstructed tau energy scale of 2% to 4%, depending on transverse energy and pseudorapidity, is achieved using two independent methods. The offline tau identification efficiency is measured with a precision of 2.5% for hadronically decaying tau leptons with one associated track, and of 4% for the case of three associated tracks, inclusive in pseudorapidity and for a visible transverse energy greater than 20 GeV. For hadronic tau lepton decays selected by offline algorithms, the tau trigger identification efficiency is measured with a precision of 2% to 8%, depending on the transverse energy. The performance of the tau algorithms, both offline and at the trigger level, is found to be stable with respect to the number of concurrent proton--proton interactions and has supported a variety of physics results using hadronically decaying tau leptons at ATLAS.

Measurement of the production of neighbouring jets in lead-lead collisions at √sNN=2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This Letter presents measurements of correlated production of nearby jets in Pb+Pb collisions at sNN−−−√=2.76 TeV using the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The measurement was performed using 0.14 nb−1 of data recorded in 2011. The production of correlated jet pairs was quantified using the rate, RΔR, of ``neighbouring'' jets that accompany ``test'' jets within a given range of angular distance, ΔR, in the pseudorapidity--azimuthal angle plane. The jets were measured in the ATLAS calorimeter and were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with radius parameters d=0.2, 0.3, and 0.4. RΔR was measured in different Pb+Pb collision centrality bins, characterized by the total transverse energy measured in the forward calorimeters. A centrality dependence of RΔR is observed for all three jet radii with RΔR found to be lower in central collisions than in peripheral collisions. The ratios formed by the RΔR values in different centrality bins and the values in the 40--80 % centrality bin are presented.

Two-particle Bose–Einstein correlations in pp collisions at s√= 0.9 and 7 TeV measured with the ATLAS detector

The paper presents studies of Bose--Einstein Correlations (BEC) for pairs of like-sign charged particles measured in the kinematic range pT> 100 MeV and |η|< 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 μb−1, 190 μb−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.

Determination of the top-quark pole mass using t(t)over-bar+1-jet events collected with the ATLAS experiment in 7 TeV pp collisions

The normalized differential cross section for top-quark pair production in association with at least one jet is studied as a function of the inverse of the invariant mass of the tt¯+1-jet system. This distribution can be used for a precise determination of the top-quark mass since gluon radiation depends on the mass of the quarks. The experimental analysis is based on proton--proton collision data collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC with a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 fb−1. The selected events were identified using the lepton+jets top-quark-pair decay channel, where lepton refers to either an electron or a muon. The observed distribution is compared to a theoretical prediction at next-to-leading-order accuracy in quantum chromodynamics using the pole-mass scheme. With this method, the measured value of the top-quark pole mass, mpolet, is: mpolet =173.7 ± 1.5 (stat.) ± 1.4 (syst.) +1.0−0.5 (theory) GeV. This result represents the most precise measurement of the top-quark pole mass to date.

Search for high-mass diboson resonances with boson-tagged jets in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search is performed for narrow resonances decaying into WW, WZ, or ZZ boson pairs using 20.3 fb−1 of proton--proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of s√ = 8 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Diboson resonances with masses in the range from 1.3 to 3.0 TeV are sought after using the invariant mass distribution of dijets where both jets are tagged as a boson jet, compatible with a highly boosted W or Z boson decaying to quarks, using jet mass and substructure properties. The largest deviation from a smoothly falling background in the observed dijet invariant mass distribution occurs around 2 TeV in the WZ channel, with a global significance of 2.5 standard deviations. Exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level are set on the production cross section times branching ratio for the WZ final state of a new heavy gauge boson, W′, and for the WW and ZZ final states of Kaluza--Klein excitations of the graviton in a bulk Randall--Sundrum model, as a function of the resonance mass. W′ bosons with couplings predicted by the extended gauge model in the mass range from 1.3 to 1.5 TeV are excluded at 95% confidence level.

Search for flavour-changing neutral current top quark decays t → Hq in pp collisions at √s=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search for flavour-changing neutral current decays of a top quark to an uptype quark (q = u, c) and the Standard Model Higgs boson, where the Higgs boson decays to bb¯¯, is presented. The analysis searches for top quark pair events in which one top quark decays to Wb, with the W boson decaying leptonically, and the other top quark decays to Hq. The search is based on pp collisions at s√=8 TeV recorded in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider and uses an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb−1. Data are analysed in the lepton-plus-jets final state, characterised by an isolated electron or muon and at least four jets. The search exploits the high multiplicity of b-quark jets characteristic of signal events, and employs a likelihood discriminant that uses the kinematic differences between the signal and the background, which is dominated by tt¯→WbWb decays. No significant excess of events above the background expectation is found, and observed (expected) 95% CL upper limits of 0.56% (0.42%) and 0.61% (0.64%) are derived for the t → Hc and t → Hu branching ratios respectively. The combination of this search with other ATLAS searches in the H → γγ and H → WW *, ττ decay modes significantly improves the sensitivity, yielding observed (expected) 95% CL upper limits on the t → Hc and t → Hu branching ratios of 0.46% (0.25%) and 0.45% (0.29%) respectively. The corresponding combined observed (expected) upper limits on the |λ tcH | and |λ tuH | couplings are 0.13 (0.10) and 0.13 (0.10) respectively. These are the most restrictive direct bounds on tqH interactions measured so far.

Analysis of events with b-jets and a pair of leptons of the same charge in pp collisions at √s=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

An analysis is presented of events containing jets including at least one b-tagged jet, sizeable missing transverse momentum, and at least two leptons including a pair of the same electric charge, with the scalar sum of the jet and lepton transverse momenta being large. A data sample with an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb−1 of pp collisions at s√=8 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider is used. Standard Model processes rarely produce these final states, but there are several models of physics beyond the Standard Model that predict an enhanced rate of production of such events; the ones considered here are production of vector-like quarks, enhanced four-top-quark production, pair production of chiral b′-quarks, and production of two positively charged top quarks. Eleven signal regions are defined; subsets of these regions are combined when searching for each class of models. In the three signal regions primarily sensitive to positively charged top quark pair production, the data yield is consistent with the background expectation. There are more data events than expected from background in the set of eight signal regions defined for searching for vector-like quarks and chiral b′-quarks, but the significance of the discrepancy is less than two standard deviations. The discrepancy reaches 2.5 standard deviations in the set of five signal regions defined for searching for four-top-quark production. The results are used to set 95% CL limits on various models.

Measurement of the t(t)over-barW and t(t)over-barZ production cross sections in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The production cross sections of top-quark pairs in association with massive vector bosons have been measured using data from pp collisions at s√=8 TeV. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb−1 collected by the ATLAS detector in 2012 at the LHC. Final states with two, three or four leptons are considered. A fit to the data considering the tt¯W and tt¯Z processes simultaneously yields a significance of 5.0σ (4.2σ) over the background-only hypothesis for tt¯W (tt¯Z) production. The measured cross sections are σtt¯W=369+100−91 fb and σtt¯Z=176+58−52 fb. The background-only hypothesis with neither tt¯W nor tt¯Z production is excluded at 7.1σ. All measurements are consistent with next-to-leading-order calculations for the tt¯W and tt¯Z processes.