• Energy Research

Abstract A search for a chargino-neutralino pair decaying via the 125 GeV Higgs boson into photons is presented. The study is based on the data collected between 2015 and 2018 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1 of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. No significant excess over the expected background is observed. Upper limits at 95% confidence level for a massless $$ {\tilde{\chi}}_1^0 $$ χ ˜ 1 0 are set on several electroweakino production cross-sections and the visible cross-section for beyond the Standard Model processes. In the context of simplified supersymmetric models, 95% confidence-level limits of up to 310 GeV in $$ m\left({\tilde{\chi}}_1^{\pm }/{\tilde{\chi}}_2^0\right) $$ m χ ˜ 1 ± / χ ˜ 2 0 , where $$ m\left({\tilde{\chi}}_1^0\right) $$ m χ ˜ 1 0 = 0.5 GeV, are set. Limits at 95% confidence level are also set on the $$ {\tilde{\chi}}_1^{\pm }{\tilde{\chi}}_2^0 $$ χ ˜ 1 ± χ ˜ 2 0 cross-section in the mass plane of $$ m\left({\tilde{\chi}}_1^{\pm }/{\tilde{\chi}}_2^0\right) $$ m χ ˜ 1 ± / χ ˜ 2 0 and $$ m\left({\tilde{\chi}}_1^0\right) $$ m χ ˜ 1 0 , and on scenarios with gravitino as the lightest supersymmetric particle. Upper limits at the 95% confidence-level are set on the higgsino production cross-section. Higgsino masses below 380 GeV are excluded for the case of the higgsino fully decaying into a Higgs boson and a gravitino.

Abstract Measurements of differential cross sections are presented for inclusive isolated-photon production in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV provided by the LHC and using 139 fb−1 of data recorded by the ATLAS experiment. The cross sections are measured as functions of the photon transverse energy in different regions of photon pseudorapidity. The photons are required to be isolated by means of a fixed-cone method with two different cone radii. The dependence of the inclusive-photon production on the photon isolation is investigated by measuring the fiducial cross sections as functions of the isolation-cone radius and the ratios of the differential cross sections with different radii in different regions of photon pseudorapidity. The results presented in this paper constitute an improvement with respect to those published by ATLAS earlier: the measurements are provided for different isolation radii and with a more granular segmentation in photon pseudorapidity that can be exploited in improving the determination of the proton parton distribution functions. These improvements provide a more in-depth test of the theoretical predictions. Next-to-leading-order QCD predictions from JETPHOX and SHERPA and next-to-next-to-leading-order QCD predictions from NNLOJET are compared to the measurements, using several parameterisations of the proton parton distribution functions. The measured cross sections are well described by the fixed-order QCD predictions within the experimental and theoretical uncertainties in most of the investigated phase-space region.