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Creators/Authors contains: "Kontaxakis, P."

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  1. A measurement of the Higgs boson mass and width via its decay to two Z bosons is presented. Proton-proton collision data collected by the CMS experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb 1 at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, is used. The invariant mass distribution of four leptons in the on-shell Higgs boson decay is used to measure its mass and constrain its width. This yields the most precise single measurement of the Higgs boson mass to date, 125.04 ± 0.12 GeV , and an upper limit on the width Γ H < 330 MeV at 95% confidence level. A combination of the on- and off-shell Higgs boson production decaying to four leptons is used to determine the Higgs boson width, assuming that no new virtual particles affect the production, a premise that is tested by adding new heavy particles in the gluon fusion loop model. This result is combined with a previous CMS analysis of the off-shell Higgs boson production with decay to two leptons and two neutrinos, giving a measured Higgs boson width of 3.0 1.5 + 2.0 MeV , in agreement with the standard model prediction of 4.1 MeV. The strength of the off-shell Higgs boson production is also reported. The scenario of no off-shell Higgs boson production is excluded at a confidence level corresponding to 3.8 standard deviations. © 2025 CERN, for the CMS Collaboration2025CERN 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available May 1, 2026
  2. This report presents a comprehensive collection of searches for new physics performed by the ATLAS Collaboration during the Run~2 period of data taking at the Large Hadron Collider, from 2015 to 2018, corresponding to about 140~$$^{-1}$$ of $$\sqrt{s}=13$$~TeV proton--proton collision data. These searches cover a variety of beyond-the-standard model topics such as dark matter candidates, new vector bosons, hidden-sector particles, leptoquarks, or vector-like quarks, among others. Searches for supersymmetric particles or extended Higgs sectors are explicitly excluded as these are the subject of separate reports by the Collaboration. For each topic, the most relevant searches are described, focusing on their importance and sensitivity and, when appropriate, highlighting the experimental techniques employed. In addition to the description of each analysis, complementary searches are compared, and the overall sensitivity of the ATLAS experiment to each type of new physics is discussed. Summary plots and statistical combinations of multiple searches are included whenever possible. 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available April 22, 2026
  3. A<sc>bstract</sc> A search for heavy, long-lived, charged particles with large ionization energy loss within the silicon tracker of the CMS experiment is presented. A data set of proton-proton collisions at a center of mass energy at$$ \sqrt{s} $$ s = 13 TeV, collected in 2017 and 2018 at the CERN LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 101 fb−1, is used in this analysis. Two different approaches for the search are taken. A new method exploits the independence of the silicon pixel and strips measurements, while the second method improves on previous techniques using ionization to determine a mass selection. No significant excess of events above the background expectation is observed. The results are interpreted in the context of the pair production of supersymmetric particles, namely gluinos, top squarks, and tau sleptons, and of the Drell-Yan pair production of fourth generation (τ′) leptons with an electric charge equal to or twice the absolute value of the electron charge (e). An interpretation of a Z’ boson decaying to twoτ′ leptons with an electric charge equal to 2eis presented for the first time. The 95% confidence upper limits on the production cross section are extracted for each of these hypothetical particles. 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available April 1, 2026
  4. Free, publicly-accessible full text available April 1, 2026
  5. A<sc>bstract</sc> Measurements of fiducial and total inclusive cross sections for W and Z boson production are presented in proton-proton collisions at$$ \sqrt{s} $$ s = 5.02 and 13 TeV. Electron and muon decay modes (ℓ= e orμ) are studied in the data collected with the CMS detector in 2017, in dedicated runs with reduced instantaneous luminosity. The data sets correspond to integrated luminosities of 298 ± 6 pb−1at 5.02 TeV and 206 ± 5 pb−1at 13 TeV. Measured values of the products of the total inclusive cross sections and the branching fractions at 5.02 TeV areσ(pp→W + X)$$ \mathcal{B} $$ B (W→ ℓν) = 7300±10 (stat)±60 (syst)±140 (lumi) pb, andσ(pp→Z+X)$$ \mathcal{B} $$ B (Z→ ℓ+) = 669±2 (stat)±6 (syst)±13 (lumi) pb for the dilepton invariant mass in the range of 60–120 GeV. The corresponding results at 13 TeV are 20480±10 (stat)±170 (syst)±470 (lumi) pb and 1952±4 (stat)±18 (syst)±45 (lumi) pb. The measured values agree with cross section calculations at next-to-next-to-leading-order in perturbative quantum chromodynamics. Fiducial and total inclusive cross sections, ratios of cross sections of W+and Wproduction as well as inclusive W and Z boson production, and ratios of these measurements at 5.02 and 13 TeV are reported. 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available April 1, 2026
  6. Top-quark pair production is observed in lead–lead ( Pb + Pb ) collisions at s NN = 5.02 TeV at the Large Hadron Collider with the ATLAS detector. The data sample was recorded in 2015 and 2018, amounting to an integrated luminosity of 1.9 nb 1 . Events with exactly one electron and one muon and at least two jets are selected. Top-quark pair production is measured with an observed (expected) significance of 5.0 (4.1) standard deviations. The measured top-quark pair production cross section is σ t t ¯ = 3.6 0.9 + 1.0 ( stat ) 0.5 + 0.8 ( syst ) μ b , with a total relative uncertainty of 31%, and is consistent with theoretical predictions using a range of different nuclear parton distribution functions. The observation of this process consolidates the evidence of the existence of all quark flavors in the preequilibrium stage of the quark-gluon plasma at very high energy densities, similar to the conditions present in the early Universe. © 2025 CERN, for the ATLAS Collaboration2025CERN 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available April 1, 2026
  7. A<sc>bstract</sc> A study of the Higgs boson decaying into bottom quarks (H→$$ b\overline{b} $$ b b ¯ ) and charm quarks (H→$$ c\overline{c} $$ c c ¯ ) is performed, in the associated production channel of the Higgs boson with aWorZboson, using 140 fb−1of proton-proton collision data at$$ \sqrt{s} $$ s = 13 TeV collected by the ATLAS detector. The individual production ofWHandZHwithH→$$ b\overline{b} $$ b b ¯ is established with observed (expected) significances of 5.3 (5.5) and 4.9 (5.6) standard deviations, respectively. Differential cross-section measurements of the gauge boson transverse momentum within the simplified template cross-section framework are performed in a total of 13 kinematical fiducial regions. The search for theH→$$ c\overline{c} $$ c c ¯ decay yields an observed (expected) upper limit at 95% confidence level of 11.5 (10.6) times the Standard Model prediction. The results are also used to set constraints on the charm coupling modifier, resulting in|κc| <4.2 at 95% confidence level. Combining theH→$$ b\overline{b} $$ b b ¯ andH→$$ c\overline{c} $$ c c ¯ measurements constrains the absolute value of the ratio of Higgs-charm and Higgs-bottom coupling modifiers (|κcb|) to be less than 3.6 at 95% confidence level. 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available April 1, 2026
  8. Nuclear medium effects on B + meson production are studied using the binary-collision scaled cross section ratio between events of different charged-particle multiplicities from proton-lead collisions. Data, collected by the CMS experiment in 2016 at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of s NN = 8.16 TeV , corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 175 nb 1 , were used. The scaling factors in the ratio are determined using a novel approach based on the Z μ μ + cross sections measured in the same events. The scaled ratio for B + is consistent with unity for all event multiplicities, putting stringent constraints on nuclear modification for heavy flavor. © 2025 CERN, for the CMS Collaboration2025CERN 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available March 1, 2026
  9. Abstract A search is presented for the pair production of new heavy resonances, each decaying into a top quark (t) or antiquark and a gluon (g). The analysis uses data recorded with the CMS detector from proton–proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13$$\,\text {Te}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V}$$ Te V at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138$$\,\text {fb}^{-1}$$ fb - 1 . Events with one muon or electron, multiple jets, and missing transverse momentum are selected. After using a deep neural network to enrich the data sample with signal-like events, distributions in the scalar sum of the transverse momenta of all reconstructed objects are analyzed in the search for a signal. No significant deviations from the standard model prediction are found. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set on the product of cross section and branching fraction squared for the pair production of excited top quarks in the$$\text {t}^{*} \rightarrow {\text {t}} {\text {g}} $$ t tg decay channel. The upper limits range from 120 to 0.8$$\,\text {fb}$$ fb for a$$\text {t}^{*} $$ t with spin-1/2 and from 15 to 1.0$$\,\text {fb}$$ fb for a$$\text {t}^{*} $$ t with spin-3/2. These correspond to mass exclusion limits up to 1050 and 1700$$\,\text {Ge}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V}$$ Ge V for spin-1/2 and spin-3/2$$\text {t}^{*} $$ t particles, respectively. These are the most stringent limits to date on the existence of$$\text {t}^{*} \rightarrow {\text {t}} {\text {g}} $$ t tg resonances. 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available March 1, 2026
  10. The ATLAS experiment has developed extensive software and distributed computing systems for Run 3 of the LHC. These systems are described in detail, including software infrastructure and workflows, distributed data and workload management, database infrastructure, and validation. The use of these systems to prepare the data for physics analysis and assess its quality are described, along with the software tools used for data analysis itself. An outlook for the development of these projects towards Run 4 is also provided. 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available March 6, 2026