Many extensions of the Standard Model posit the existence of heavy particles with long lifetimes. This article presents the results of a search for events containing at least one long-lived particle that decays at a significant distance from its production point into two leptons or into five or more charged particles. This analysis uses a data sample of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb$^{-1}$ collected in 2012 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. No events are observed in any of the signal regions, and limits are set on model parameters within supersymmetric scenarios involving R-parity violation, split supersymmetry, and gauge mediation. In some of the search channels, the trigger and search strategy are based only on the decay products of individual long-lived particles, irrespective of the rest of the event. In these cases, the provided limits can easily be reinterpreted in different scenarios.

The results of a search for top squark (stop) pair production in final states with one isolated lepton, jets, and missing transverse momentum are reported. The analysis is performed with proton--proton collision data at $\sqrt{s} = 8$ TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2012 corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $20$ fb$^{-1}$. The lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) is taken to be the lightest neutralino which only interacts weakly and is assumed to be stable. The stop decay modes considered are those to a top quark and the LSP as well as to a bottom quark and the lightest chargino, where the chargino decays to the LSP by emitting a $W$ boson. A wide range of scenarios with different mass splittings between the stop, the lightest neutralino and the lightest chargino are considered, including cases where the $W$ bosons or the top quarks are off-shell. Decay modes involving the heavier charginos and neutralinos are addressed using a set of phenomenological models of supersymmetry. No significant excess over the Standard Model prediction is observed. A stop with a mass between $210$ and $640$ GeV decaying directly to a top quark and a massless LSP is excluded at $95$ % confidence level, and in models where the mass of the lightest chargino is twice that of the LSP, stops are excluded at $95$ % confidence level up to a mass of $500$ GeV for an LSP mass in the range of $100$ to $150$ GeV. Stringent exclusion limits are also derived for all other stop decay modes considered, and model-independent upper limits are set on the visible cross-section for processes beyond the Standard Model.

A search is presented for the direct pair production of a chargino and a neutralino $pp\to\tilde{\chi}^\pm_1\tilde{\chi}^0_2$, where the chargino decays to the lightest neutralino and the $W$ boson, $\tilde{\chi}^\pm_1 \to \tilde{\chi}^0_1 (W^{\pm}\to\ell^{\pm}\nu)$, while the neutralino decays to the lightest neutralino and the 125 GeV Higgs boson, $\tilde{\chi}^0_2 \to \tilde{\chi}^0_1 (h\to bb/\gamma\gamma/\ell^{\pm}\nu qq)$. The final states considered for the search have large missing transverse momentum, an isolated electron or muon, and one of the following: either two jets identified as originating from bottom quarks, or two photons, or a second electron or muon with the same electric charge. The analysis is based on 20.3 fb$^{-1}$ of $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV proton-proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with the Standard Model expectations, and limits are set in the context of a simplified supersymmetric model.

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.

The results of mid-rapidity ($0 < y < 0.8$) neutral pion spectra over an extended transverse momentum range ($1 < p_T < 12$ GeV/$c$) in $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV Au+Au collisions, measured by the STAR experiment, are presented. The neutral pions are reconstructed from photons measured either by the STAR Barrel Electro-Magnetic Calorimeter (BEMC) or by the Time Projection Chamber (TPC) via tracking of conversion electron-positron pairs. Our measurements are compared to previously published $\pi^{\pm}$ and $\pi^0$ results. The nuclear modification factors $R_{\mathrm{CP}}$ and $R_{\mathrm{AA}}$ of $\pi^0$ are also presented as a function of $p_T$ . In the most central Au+Au collisions, the binary collision scaled $\pi^0$ yield at high $p_T$ is suppressed by a factor of about 5 compared to the expectation from the yield of p+p collisions. Such a large suppression is in agreement with previous observations for light quark mesons and is consistent with the scenario that partons suffer considerable energy loss in the dense medium formed in central nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC.

Identified charged particle spectra of $\pi^{\pm}$, $K^{\pm}$, $p$ and $\pbar$ at mid-rapidity ($|y|<0.1$) measured by the $\dedx$ method in the STAR-TPC are reported for $pp$ and d+Au collisions at $\snn = 200$ GeV and for Au+Au collisions at 62.4 GeV, 130 GeV, and 200 GeV. ... [Shortened for arXiv list. Full abstract in manuscript.]

We report on measurements of dielectron ($e^+e^-$) production in Au$+$Au collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 200 GeV per nucleon-nucleon pair using the STAR detector at RHIC. Systematic measurements of the dielectron yield as a function of transverse momentum ($p_{\rm T}$) and collision centrality show an enhancement compared to a cocktail simulation of hadronic sources in the low invariant-mass region ($M_{ee}<$ 1 GeV/$c^2$). This enhancement cannot be reproduced by the $\rho$-meson vacuum spectral function. In minimum-bias collisions, in the invariant-mass range of 0.30 $-$ 0.76 GeV/$c^2$, integrated over the full $p_{\rm T}$ acceptance, the enhancement factor is 1.76 $\pm$ 0.06 (stat.) $\pm$ 0.26 (sys.) $\pm$ 0.29 (cocktail). The enhancement factor exhibits weak centrality and $p_{\rm T}$ dependence in STAR's accessible kinematic regions, while the excess yield in this invariant-mass region as a function of the number of participating nucleons follows a power-law shape with a power of 1.44 $\pm$ 0.10. Models that assume an in-medium broadening of the $\rho$ meson spectral function consistently describe the observed excess in these measurements. Additionally, we report on measurements of $\omega$ and $\phi$-meson production through their $e^+e^-$ decay channel. These measurements show good agreement with Tsallis Blast-Wave model predictions as well as, in the case of the $\phi$-meson, results through its $K^+K^-$ decay channel. In the intermediate invariant-mass region (1.1$<M_{ee}<$ 3 GeV/$c^2$), we investigate the spectral shapes from different collision centralities. Physics implications for possible in-medium modification of charmed hadron production and other physics sources are discussed.

A search for long-lived particles (LLPs) produced in decays of standard model (SM) Higgs bosons is presented. The data sample consists of 137 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} =$ 13 TeV, recorded at the LHC in 2016-2018. A novel technique is employed to reconstruct decays of LLPs in the endcap muon detectors. The search is sensitive to a broad range of LLP decay modes and to masses as low as a few GeV. No excess of events above the SM background is observed. The most stringent limits to date on the branching fraction of the Higgs boson to LLPs subsequently decaying to quarks and $\tau^+\tau^-$ are found for proper decay lengths greater than 6, 20, and 40 m, for LLP masses of 7, 15, and 40 GeV, respectively.

We present a measurement of b jet transverse momentum (pt) spectra in proton-lead (pPb) collisions using a dataset corresponding to about 35 inverse nanobarns collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. Jets from b quark fragmentation are found by exploiting the long lifetime of hadrons containing a b quark through tagging methods using distributions of the secondary vertex mass and displacement. Extracted cross sections for b jets are scaled by the effective number of nucleon-nucleon collisions and are compared to a reference obtained from PYTHIA simulations of pp collisions. The PYTHIA-based estimate of the nuclear modification factor is found to be 1.22 +/- 0.15 (stat + syst pPb) +/- 0.27 (syst PYTHIA) averaged over all jets with pt between 55 and 400 GeV/c and with abs(eta[lab]) < 2. We also compare this result to predictions from models using perturbative calculations in quantum chromodynamics.

A study of the associated production of a Z boson and a charm quark jet (Z + c), and a comparison to production with a b quark jet (Z + b), in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV are presented. The analysis uses a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb$^{-1}$, collected with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC. The Z boson candidates are identified through their decays into pairs of electrons or muons. Jets originating from heavy flavour quarks are identified using semileptonic decays of c or b flavoured hadrons and hadronic decays of charm hadrons. The measurements are performed in the kinematic region with two leptons with $p_{\rm T}^{\ell} > $ 20 GeV, ${|\eta^{\ell}|} < $ 2.1, 71 $ < m_{\ell\ell} < $ 111 GeV, and heavy flavour jets with $p_{\rm T}^{{\rm jet}} > $ 25 GeV and ${|\eta^{{\rm jet}}|} < $ 2.5. The Z + c production cross section is measured to be $\sigma({\mathrm{p}}{\mathrm{p}} \rightarrow \mathrm{Z} + \mathrm{c} + \mathrm{X}) {\cal B}(\mathrm{Z} \rightarrow \ell^+\ell^-) = $ 8.8 $ \pm $ 0.5 (stat) $ \pm $ 0.6 (syst) pb. The ratio of the Z + c and Z + b production cross sections is measured to be $\sigma({\mathrm{p}}{\mathrm{p}} \rightarrow \mathrm{Z} + \mathrm{c} + \mathrm{X}) / \sigma({\mathrm{p}}{\mathrm{p}} \rightarrow \mathrm{Z} + \mathrm{b} + \mathrm{X}) = $ 2.0 $ \pm $ 0.2 (stat) $ \pm $ 0.2 (syst). The Z + c production cross section and the cross section ratio are also measured as a function of the transverse momentum of the Z boson and of the heavy flavour jet. The measurements are compared with theoretical predictions.