The ATLAS Collaboration has measured the inclusive production of $Z$ bosons via their decays into electron and muon pairs in $p+$Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=5.02$ TeV at the Large Hadron Collider. The measurements are made using data corresponding to integrated luminosities of 29.4 nb$^{-1}$ and 28.1 nb$^{-1}$ for $Z \rightarrow ee$ and $Z \rightarrow \mu\mu$, respectively. The results from the two channels are consistent and combined to obtain a cross section times the $Z \rightarrow \ell\ell$ branching ratio, integrated over the rapidity region $|y^{*}_{Z}|<3.5$, of 139.8 $\pm$ 4.8 (stat.) $\pm$ 6.2 (syst.) $\pm$ 3.8 (lumi.) nb. Differential cross sections are presented as functions of the $Z$ boson rapidity and transverse momentum, and compared with models based on parton distributions both with and without nuclear corrections. The centrality dependence of $Z$ boson production in $p+$Pb collisions is measured and analyzed within the framework of a standard Glauber model and the model's extension for fluctuations of the underlying nucleon-nucleon scattering cross section.
Inclusive multi-jet production is studied in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, using the ATLAS detector. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 2.4 pb^-1. Results on multi-jet cross sections are presented and compared to both leading-order plus parton-shower Monte Carlo predictions and to next-to-leading-order QCD calculations.
The ATLAS experiment has observed 1995 Z boson candidates in data corresponding to 0.15 inverse nb of integrated luminosity obtained in the 2011 LHC Pb+Pb run at sqrt(s_NN)=2.76 TeV. The Z bosons are reconstructed via di-electron and di-muon decay channels, with a background contamination of less than 3%. Results from the two channels are consistent and are combined. Within the statistical and systematic uncertainties, the per-event Z boson yield is proportional to the number of binary collisions estimated by the Glauber model. The elliptic anisotropy of the azimuthal distribution of the Z boson with respect to the event plane is found to be consistent with zero.
Double-differential dijet cross sections measured in pp collisions at the LHC with a 7 TeV centre-of-mass energy are presented as functions of dijet mass and rapidity separation of the two highest-pT jets. These measurements are obtained using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.5/fb, recorded by the ATLAS detector in 2011. The data are corrected for detector effects so that cross sections are presented at the particle level. Cross sections are measured up to 5 TeV dijet mass using jets reconstructed with the anti-kt algorithm for values of the jet radius parameter of 0.4 and 0.6. The cross sections are compared with next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD calculations by NLOJET++ corrected to account for non-perturbative effects. Comparisons with POWHEG predictions, using a next-to-leading-order matrix element calculation interfaced to a parton-shower Monte Carlo simulation, are also shown. Electroweak effects are accounted for in both cases. The quantitative comparison of data and theoretical predictions obtained using various parameterizations of the parton distribution functions is performed using a frequentist method. An example setting a lower limit on the compositeness scale for a model of contact interactions is presented, showing that the unfolded results can be used to constrain contributions to dijet production beyond that predicted by the Standard Model.
Measurements are presented of differential cross-sections for top quark pair production in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV relative to the total inclusive top quark pair production cross-section. A data sample of 2.05/fb recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider is used. Relative differential cross-sections are derived as a function of the invariant mass, the transverse momentum and the rapidity of the top quark pair system. Events are selected in the lepton (electron or muon) + jets channel. The background-subtracted differential distributions are corrected for detector effects, normalized to the total inclusive top quark pair production cross-section and compared to theoretical predictions. The measurement uncertainties range typically between 10% and 20% and are generally dominated by systematic effects. No significant deviations from the Standard Model expectations are observed.
A search for highly ionising, penetrating particles with electric charges from |q| = 2e to 6e is performed using the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Proton-proton collision data taken at $\sqrt{s}$=7 TeV during the 2011 running period, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.4 fb$^{-1}$, are analysed. No signal candidates are observed, and 95% confidence level cross-section upper limits are interpreted as mass-exclusion lower limits for a simplified Drell--Yan production model. In this model, masses are excluded from 50 GeV up to 430, 480, 490, 470 and 420 GeV for charges 2e, 3e, 4e, 5e and 6e, respectively.
The number of charged particles inside jets is a widely used discriminant for identifying the quark or gluon nature of the initiating parton and is sensitive to both the perturbative and non-perturbative components of fragmentation. This paper presents a measurement of the average number of charged particles with $p_\text{T}>500$ MeV inside high-momentum jets in dijet events using 20.3 fb$^{-1}$ of data recorded with the ATLAS detector in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV collisions at the LHC. The jets considered have transverse momenta from 50 GeV up to and beyond 1.5 TeV. The reconstructed charged-particle track multiplicity distribution is unfolded to remove distortions from detector effects and the resulting charged-particle multiplicity is compared to several models. Furthermore, quark and gluon jet fractions are used to extract the average charged-particle multiplicity for quark and gluon jets separately.
The result of a search for pair production of the supersymmetric partner of the Standard Model bottom quark ($\tilde{b}_1$) is reported. The search uses 3.2 fb$^{-1}$ of $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$13 TeV collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in 2015. Bottom squarks are searched for in events containing large missing transverse momentum and exactly two jets identified as originating from $b$-quarks. No excess above the expected Standard Model background yield is observed. Exclusion limits at 95% confidence level on the mass of the bottom squark are derived in phenomenological supersymmetric $R$-parity-conserving models in which the $\tilde{b}_1$ is the lightest squark and is assumed to decay exclusively via $\tilde{b}_1 \rightarrow b \tilde{\chi}_1^0$, where $\tilde{\chi}_1^0$ is the lightest neutralino. The limits significantly extend previous results; bottom squark masses up to 800 (840) GeV are excluded for the $\tilde{\chi}_1^0$ mass below 360 (100) GeV whilst differences in mass above 100 GeV between the $\tilde{b}_1$ and the $\tilde{\chi}_1^0$ are excluded up to a $\tilde{b}_1$ mass of 500 GeV.
The $ZZ$ production cross section in proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV center-of-mass energy is measured using 3.2 fb$^{-1}$ of data recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The considered $Z$ boson candidates decay to an electron or muon pair of mass 66-116 GeV. The cross section is measured in a fiducial phase space reflecting the detector acceptance. It is also extrapolated to a total phase space for $Z$ bosons in the same mass range and of all decay modes, giving $16.7^{+2.2}_{-2.0}$(stat.)$^{+0.9}_{-0.7}$(syst.)$^{+1.0}_{-0.7}$(lumi.) pb. The results agree with standard model predictions.
The dynamics of isolated-photon plus jet production in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV has been studied with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using an integrated luminosity of 37 pb-1. Measurements of isolated-photon plus jet bin-averaged cross sections are presented as functions of photon transverse energy, jet transverse momentum and jet rapidity. In addition, the bin-averaged cross sections as functions of the difference between the azimuthal angles of the photon and the jet, the photon--jet invariant mass and the scattering angle in the photon--jet centre-of-mass frame have been measured. Next-to-leading-order QCD calculations are compared to the measurements and provide a good description of the data, except for the case of the azimuthal opening angle.
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