Identification and rejection of pile-up jets at high pseudorapidity with the ATLAS detector

The rejection of forward jets originating from additional proton–proton interactions (pile-up) is crucial for a variety of physics analyses at the LHC, including Standard Model measurements and searches for physics beyond the Standard Model. The identification of such jets is challenging due to the lack of track and vertex information in the pseudorapidity range |η| > 2.5. This paper presents a novel strategy for forward pile-up jet tagging that exploits jet shapes and topological jet correlations in pile-up interactions. Measurements of the per-jet tagging efficiency are presented using a data set of 3.2 fb−1 of proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector. The fraction of pile-up jets rejected in the range 2.5 < |η| < 4.5 is estimated in simulated events with an average of 22 interactions per bunch-crossing. It increases with jet transverse momentum and, for jets with transverse momentum between 20 and 50 GeV, it ranges between 49% and 67% with an efficiency of 85% for selecting hard-scatter jets. A case study is performed in Higgs boson production via the vector-boson fusion process, showing that these techniques mitigate the background growth due to additional proton–proton interactions, thus enhancing the reach for such signatures

Performance of the ATLAS track reconstruction algorithms in dense environments in LHC Run 2

With the increase in energy of the Large Hadron Collider to a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV for Run 2, events with dense environments, such as in the cores of highenergy jets, became a focus for new physics searches as well as measurements of the Standard Model. These environments are characterized by charged-particle separations of the order of the tracking detectors sensor granularity. Basic track quantities are compared between 3.2 fb(-1) of data collected by the ATLAS experiment and simulation of protonproton collisions producing high-transverse-momentum jets at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The impact of chargedparticle separations and multiplicities on the track reconstruction performance is discussed. The track reconstruction efficiency in the cores of jets with transverse momenta between 200 and 1600 GeV is quantified using a novel, datadriven, method. The method uses the energy loss, dE/ dx, to identify pixel clusters originating from two charged particles. Of the charged particles creating these clusters, themeasured fraction that fail to be reconstructed is 0.061 +/- 0.006 (stat.) +/- 0.014 (syst.) and 0.093 +/- 0.017 (stat.) +/- 0.021 (syst.) for jet transverse momenta of 200-400GeV and 1400-1600GeV, respectively

Identification and rejection of pile-up jets at high pseudorapidity with the ATLAS detector (vol 77, 580, 2017)

SCOAP

Search for heavy charged long-lived particles in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV using an ionisation measurement with the ATLAS detector

This Letter presents a search for heavy charged long-lived particles produced in proton–proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV at the LHC using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.1 fb−1 collected by the ATLAS experiment in 2015 and 2016. These particles are expected to travel with a velocity significantly below the speed of light, and therefore have a specific ionisation higher than any high-momentum Standard Model particle of unit charge. The pixel subsystem of the ATLAS detector is used in this search to measure the ionisation energy loss of all reconstructed charged particles which traverse the pixel detector. Results are interpreted assuming the pair production of R-hadrons as composite colourless states of a long-lived gluino and Standard Model partons. No significant deviation from Standard Model background expectations is observed, and lifetime-dependent upper limits on R-hadron production cross-sections and gluino masses are set, assuming the gluino always decays to two quarks and a 100 GeV stable neutralino. R-hadrons with lifetimes above 1.0 ns are excluded at the 95% confidence level, with lower limits on the gluino mass ranging between 1290 GeV and 2060 GeV. In the case of stable R-hadrons, the lower limit on the gluino mass at the 95% confidence level is 1890 GeV