Professor Daniela Bortoletto

Abstract:

Abstract Measurements of both the inclusive and differential production cross sections of a top-quark–antiquark pair in association with a Z boson ( $$t{\bar{t}}Z$$ t t ¯ Z ) are presented. The measurements are performed by targeting final states with three or four isolated leptons (electrons or muons) and are based on $$\sqrt{s} = 13$$ s = 13 TeV proton–proton collision data with an integrated luminosity of 139 $$\hbox {fb}^{-1}$$ fb - 1 , recorded from 2015 to 2018 with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The inclusive cross section is measured to be $$\sigma _{t{\bar{t}}Z} = 0.99 \pm 0.05$$ σ t t ¯ Z = 0.99 ± 0.05 (stat.) $$\pm \, 0.08$$ ± 0.08 (syst.) pb, in agreement with the most precise theoretical predictions. The differential measurements are presented as a function of a number of kinematic variables which probe the kinematics of the $$t{\bar{t}}Z$$ t t ¯ Z system. Both absolute and normalised differential cross-section measurements are performed at particle and parton levels for specific fiducial volumes and are compared with theoretical predictions at different levels of precision, based on a $$\chi ^{2}/$$ χ 2 / ndf and p value computation. Overall, good agreement is observed between the unfolded data and the predictions.

Abstract:

Abstract Non-ionizing energy loss causes bulk damage to the silicon sensors of the ATLAS pixel and strip detectors. This damage has important implications for data-taking operations, charged-particle track reconstruction, detector simulations, and physics analysis. This paper presents simulations and measurements of the leakage current in the ATLAS pixel detector and semiconductor tracker as a function of location in the detector and time, using data collected in Run 1 (2010–2012) and Run 2 (2015–2018) of the Large Hadron Collider. The extracted fluence shows a much stronger | z |-dependence in the innermost layers than is seen in simulation. Furthermore, the overall fluence on the second innermost layer is significantly higher than in simulation, with better agreement in layers at higher radii. These measurements are important for validating the simulation models and can be used in part to justify safety factors for future detector designs and interventions.

Abstract:

Abstract The production cross-section of a top quark in association with a W boson is measured using proton–proton collisions at $$\sqrt{s} = 8\,\text {TeV}$$ s=8TeV . The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of $$20.2\,\text {fb}^{-1}$$ 20.2fb-1 , and was collected in 2012 by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The analysis is performed in the single-lepton channel. Events are selected by requiring one isolated lepton (electron or muon) and at least three jets. A neural network is trained to separate the tW signal from the dominant $$t{\bar{t}}$$ tt¯ background. The cross-section is extracted from a binned profile maximum-likelihood fit to a two-dimensional discriminant built from the neural-network output and the invariant mass of the hadronically decaying W boson. The measured cross-section is $$\sigma _{tW} = 26 \pm 7\,\text {pb}$$ σtW=26±7pb , in good agreement with the Standard Model expectation.