Search for new physics in final states with semi-visible jets or anomalous signatures using the ATLAS detector

Abstract

A search is presented for hadronic signatures of beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics, with an emphasis on signatures of a strongly-coupled hidden dark sector accessed via resonant production of a $Z^{\prime }$ mediator. The ATLAS experiment dataset collected at the Large Hadron Collider from 2015 to 2018 is used, consisting of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 140 fb${}^{-1}$. The $Z^{\prime }$ mediator is considered to decay to two dark quarks, which each hadronize and decay to showers containing both dark and Standard Model particles, producing a topology of interacting and non-interacting particles within a jet known as ``semi-visible". Machine learning methods are used to select these dark showers and reject the dominant background of mismeasured multijet events, including an anomaly detection approach to preserve broad sensitivity to a variety of BSM topologies. A resonance search is performed by fitting the transverse mass spectrum based on a functional form background estimation. No significant excess over the expected background is observed. Results are presented as limits on the production cross section of semi-visible jet signals, parameterized by the fraction of invisible particles in the decay and the $Z^{\prime }$ mass, and by quantifying the significance of any generic Gaussian-shaped mass peak in the anomaly region.

arXiv comment45 pages in total, author list starting page 28, 11 figures, 2 tables, published in Phys. Rev. D 112 (2025) 012021. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/EXOT-2021-19

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