Brooks, William K.

A search for the exclusive decays of the Higgs and Z bosons to a ϕ or ρ meson and a photon is performed with a pp collision data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of up to 35.6 fb−1 collected at s√=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. These decays have been suggested as a probe of the Higgs boson couplings to light quarks. No significant excess of events is observed above the background, as expected from the Standard Model. Upper limits at 95% confidence level were obtained on the branching fractions of the Higgs boson decays to ϕγ and ργ of 5.0×10−4 and 10.4×10−4, respectively. The corresponding 95% confidence level upper limits for the Z boson decays are 0.7×10−6 and 4.0×10−6 for ϕγ and ργ, respectively.

The observation of the electroweak production of single-top-quarks is made using 255 pb−1 of proton-proton collision data recorded at s√=5.02 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. An event selection is used to identify single-top-quark candidates arising from t-channel production with the top quark decaying semi-leptonically. Events passing the selection are then used to measure the inclusive cross-section for the combined production of single-top-quarks and antiquarks, σ(tq+t¯q), and the ratio Rt between these two. They are measured to be σ(tq+t¯q)=27.1+4.4−4.1(stat.)+4.4−3.7(syst.) pb and Rt=2.73+1.43−0.82(stat.)+1.01−0.29(syst.). The individual single-top-quark (tq) and single-top-antiquark (t¯q) production cross-sections are measured to be σ(tq)=19.8+3.9−3.1(stat.)+2.9−2.2(syst.) pb and σ(t¯q)=7.3+3.2−2.1(stat.)+2.8−1.5(syst.) pb. All measurements are in good agreement with the Standard Model predictions.