Professor Amanda Cooper-Sarkar

Abstract:

A search is presented for same-sign top-quark production and down-type heavy quarks of charge -1/3 in events with two isolated leptons (e or μ) that have the same electric charge, at least two jets and large missing transverse momentum. The data are selected from pp collisions at ps = 7 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 1.04 fb-1. The observed data are consistent with expectations from Standard Model processes. Upper limits are set at 95% confidence level on the cross section of new sources of same-sign top-quark pair production of 1.4-2.0 pb depending on the assumed mediator mass. Upper limits are also set on the pair-production cross-section for new heavy down-type quarks; a lower limit of 450 GeV is set at 95% confidence level on the mass of heavy down-type quarks under the assumption that they decay 100% of the time to Wt. Copyright CERN.

Abstract:

A combined search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC using datasets corresponding to integrated luminosities from 1.04 fb-1 to 4.9 fb-1 of pp collisions collected at s=7TeV is presented. The Higgs boson mass ranges 112.9-115.5 GeV, 131-238 GeV and 251-466 GeV are excluded at the 95% confidence level (CL), while the range 124-519 GeV is expected to be excluded in the absence of a signal. An excess of events is observed around mH~126GeV with a local significance of 3.5 standard deviations (σ). The local significances of H→γγ, H→ZZ(z.ast;)→ℓ+ℓ-ℓ'+ℓ'- and H→WW(z.ast;)→ℓ+νℓ'-ν- the three most sensitive channels in this mass range, are 2.8σ, 2.1σ and 1.4σ, respectively. The global probability for the background to produce such a fluctuation anywhere in the explored Higgs boson mass range 110-600 GeV is estimated to be ~1.4% or, equivalently, 2.2σ. © 2012 CERN.