Results from a search for supersymmetry in events with four or more leptons including electrons, muons and taus are presented. The analysis uses a data sample corresponding to 20.3 $fb^{-1}$ of proton--proton collisions delivered by the Large Hadron Collider at $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS detector. Signal regions are designed to target supersymmetric scenarios that can be either enriched in or depleted of events involving the production of a $Z$ boson. No significant deviations are observed in data from Standard Model predictions and results are used to set upper limits on the event yields from processes beyond the Standard Model. Exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on the masses of relevant supersymmetric particles are obtained. In R-parity-violating simplified models with decays of the lightest supersymmetric particle to electrons and muons, limits of 1350 GeV and 750 GeV are placed on gluino and chargino masses, respectively. In R-parity-conserving simplified models with heavy neutralinos decaying to a massless lightest supersymmetric particle, heavy neutralino masses up to 620 GeV are excluded. Limits are also placed on other supersymmetric scenarios.
This paper presents a search for direct electroweak gaugino or gluino pair production with a chargino nearly mass-degenerate with a stable neutralino. It is based on an integrated luminosity of 36.1 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ of $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV collected by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The final state of interest is a disappearing track accompanied by at least one jet with high transverse momentum from initial-state radiation or by four jets from the gluino decay chain. The use of short track segments reconstructed from the innermost tracking layers significantly improves the sensitivity to short chargino lifetimes. The results are found to be consistent with Standard Model predictions. Exclusion limits are set at 95% confidence level on the mass of charginos and gluinos for different chargino lifetimes. For a pure wino with a lifetime of about 0.2 ns, chargino masses up to 460 GeV are excluded. For the strong production channel, gluino masses up to 1.65 TeV are excluded assuming a chargino mass of 460 GeV and lifetime of 0.2 ns.
A search for long-lived particles decaying into hadrons is presented. The analysis uses 139 fb$^{-1}$ of $pp$ collision data collected at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV by the ATLAS detector at the LHC using events that contain multiple energetic jets and a displaced vertex. The search employs dedicated reconstruction techniques that significantly increase the sensitivity to long-lived particles decaying in the ATLAS inner detector. Background estimates for Standard Model processes and instrumental effects are extracted from data. The observed event yields are compatible with those expected from background processes. The results are used to set limits at 95% confidence level on model-independent cross sections for processes beyond the Standard Model, and on scenarios with pair-production of supersymmetric particles with long-lived electroweakinos that decay via a small $R$-parity-violating coupling. The pair-production of electroweakinos with masses below 1.5 TeV is excluded for mean proper lifetimes in the range from 0.03 ns to 1 ns. When produced in the decay of $m(\tilde{g})=2.4$ TeV gluinos, electroweakinos with $m(\tilde\chi^0_1)=1.5$ TeV are excluded with lifetimes in the range of 0.02 ns to 4 ns.
Two searches for supersymmetric particles in final states containing a same-flavour opposite-sign lepton pair, jets and large missing transverse momentum are presented. The proton-proton collision data used in these searches were collected at a centre-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb$^{-1}$. Two leptonic production mechanisms are considered: decays of squarks and gluinos with $Z$ bosons in the final state, resulting in a peak in the dilepton invariant mass distribution around the $Z$-boson mass; and decays of neutralinos (e.g. $\tilde{\chi}^{0}_{2} \rightarrow \ell^{+}\ell^{-}\tilde{\chi}^{0}_{1}$), resulting in a kinematic endpoint in the dilepton invariant mass distribution. For the former, an excess of events above the expected Standard Model background is observed, with a significance of 3 standard deviations. In the latter case, the data are well-described by the expected Standard Model background. The results from each channel are interpreted in the context of several supersymmetric models involving the production of squarks and gluinos.
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