Determination of proton parton distribution functions using ATLAS data

We present fits to determine parton distribution functions (PDFs) using top-antitop, inclusive W/Z-boson, as well as W+ and W− boson production measurements in association with jets from ATLAS, in combination with deep-inelastic scattering data from HERA. The ATLAS W and Z boson data exhibit sensitivity to the valence quark distributions and the light quark sea composition, whereas the top-quark pair production data have sensitivity to the gluon distribution. The impact of the top-antitop production data is increased by fitting several distributions simultaneously, with the full information on the systematic and statistical correlations between data points. The parton distribution functions extracted using W+jets data show an improved determination of the high-x sea-quark densities, while confirming the unsuppressed strange-quark density at lower x<0.02 found by previous ATLAS analyses

Operation and performance of the ATLAS semiconductor tracker in LHC Run 2

Abstract The semiconductor tracker (SCT) is one of the tracking systems for charged particles in the ATLAS detector. It consists of 4088 silicon strip sensor modules. During Run 2 (2015–2018) the Large Hadron Collider delivered an integrated luminosity of 156 fb-1 to the ATLAS experiment at a centre-of-mass proton-proton collision energy of 13 TeV. The instantaneous luminosity and pile-up conditions were far in excess of those assumed in the original design of the SCT detector. Due to improvements to the data acquisition system, the SCT operated stably throughout Run 2. It was available for 99.9% of the integrated luminosity and achieved a data-quality efficiency of 99.85%. Detailed studies have been made of the leakage current in SCT modules and the evolution of the full depletion voltage, which are used to study the impact of radiation damage to the modules.</jats:p