• Energy Research
• 2021-2025close

This paper presents a measurement of jet-track correlations in photon-jet events, using 1.72 nb$^{-1}$ of Pb+Pb data at $\sqrt{s_{\text{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events with energetic photon-jet pairs are selected, where the photon and jet are approximately back-to-back in azimuth. The angular correlation between jets and charged-particle tracks with transverse momentum ($p_\text{T}$) in the range 0.5-2.0 GeV in the hemisphere opposite to the jet, $|\Delta\phi\text{(jet,track)}|>\pi/2$, is measured as a function of their relative pseudorapidity difference, $|\Delta\eta\text{(jet,track)}|$. In central Pb+Pb collisions, these correlations are predicted to be sensitive to the diffusion wake in the quark-gluon plasma resulting from the lost energy of high-$p_\text{T}$ partons traversing the plasma, with a characteristic modification as a function of $|\Delta\eta\text{(jet,track)}|$. The correlations are examined with different selections on the jet-to-photon $p_\text{T}$ ratio to select events with different degrees of energy loss. No diffusion wake signal is observed within the current sensitivity and upper limits at 95% confidence level on the diffusion wake amplitude are reported.

This Letter presents the first study of the energy dependence of diboson polarization fractions in $WZ→ℓνℓ′ℓ′(ℓ,ℓ′=e,μ)$ production. The dataset used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 140 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector. Two fiducial regions with an enhanced presence of events featuring two longitudinally polarized bosons are defined. A nonzero fraction of events with two longitudinally polarized bosons is measured with an observed significance of 5.3 standard deviations in the region with 100<$p_T^Z$≤200 GeV and 1.6 standard deviations in the region with $p_T^Z$>200 GeV, where $p_T^Z$ is the transverse momentum of the Z boson. This Letter also reports the first study of the radiation-amplitude-zero effect. Events with two transversely polarized bosons are analyzed for the $ΔY(ℓWZ)$ and $ΔY(WZ)$ distributions defined respectively as the rapidity difference between the lepton from the W boson decay and the Z boson and the rapidity difference between the W boson and the Z boson. Significant suppression of events near zero is observed in both distributions. Unfolded $ΔY(ℓWZ)$ and $ΔY(WZ)$ distributions are also measured and compared to theoretical predictions. Physical review letters 133, 101802 (2024). doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.101802 Published by APS, College Park, Md.