Search for heavy resonances decaying into the fully hadronic di-tau final state with the ATLAS detector

The discovery of a heavy neutral particle would be a direct hint for new physics beyond the Standard Model. In this thesis searches for new heavy neutral particles decaying into two tau leptons, which further decay into hadrons, are presented. They cover neutral Higgs bosons in the context of the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (MSSM) as well as Z′ bosons, predicted by various theories with an extended gauge sector. Both analyses are based on the full 2012 proton-proton collision dataset taken by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The extended Higgs sector in the MSSM suggests additional heavy neutral Higgs bosons which decay into tau leptons in about 10% of the time. Given that the dominant final state, φ → bb̄, suffers from tremendous QCD initiated backgrounds, the decay into two tau leptons is the most promising final state to discover such new resonances. The fully hadronic final state is the dominant one with a branching fraction of about 42%. It governs the sensitivity, in particular at high transverse momentum when the QCD multijet background becomes small. Other theoretical extensions of the Standard Model, which are mainly driven by the concept of gauge unification, predict additional heavy particles arising from an extended underlying gauge group. Some of them further predict an enhanced coupling to fermions of the third generation. This motivates the search for Z′ bosons in the fully hadronic di-tau final state. One major challenge in physics analyses involving tau leptons is to have an outstanding performance of trigger and identification algorithms suitable to select real tau leptons with high efficiency, while rejecting fake taus originating from quark or gluon initiated jets. In this work a new tau trigger concept based on multivariate classifiers has been developed and became the default tau trigger algorithm in 2012 data-taking. An updated tau identification technique based on the log-likelihood approach has been provided for 2011 data-taking. Furthermore, a new framework has been developed to perform the tuning of the tau identification algorithm and exploited for the optimisation for 2012 data-taking, accordingly. The search for new heavy neutral Higgs bosons in the context of the MSSM has been performed exploiting the full 2012 dataset corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.5 fb−1 taken at a centreof-mass energy of √ s = 8 TeV. Updated event selection criteria and novel data-driven background estimation techniques have been developed and are suitable to increase the sensitivity of the analysis significantly. No deviations from the Standard Model prediction are observed, and thus 95% C.L. exclusion limits on the production cross section times branching ratio, σ(pp → φ) × BR(φ → ττ), are derived exploiting the CLs method. The exclusion ranges from 13.0 pb at 150 GeV to 7.0 fb at 1 TeV for Higgs boson production in association with b-quarks and from 23.6 pb at 150 GeV to 7.5 fb at 1 TeV for Higgs bosons produced via gluon-gluon fusion. The obtained exclusion limit on σ(pp → φ) × BR(φ → ττ) can be related to an exclusion of the MSSM parameter space in the MA-tan β-plane. Various benchmark scenario are considered. The ”standard candle” is the m h scenario, for which tan β values between 13.3 and 55 can be excluded at 95% C.L. in the considered mass range. Updated benchmark scenarios designed to incorporate the recently discovered SM-like Higgs boson were suggested and analysed as well. In the m h (mmod− h ) scenario tan β values between 13.5 (13.3 ) and 55 (52 ) can be excluded. Finally, a search for heavy neutral resonances in the context of Z′ bosons was performed. As in the search for new Higgs bosons, no deviation from the Standard Model prediction is observed, and hence exclusion limits on the production cross section times branching ratio, σ(pp→ Z′) × BR(Z′ → ττ), and on the Z′ boson mass are derived exploiting the Bayesian approach. Z′ bosons with MZ′ < 1.9 TeV can be excluded at 95% credibility, and thus mark the strongest exclusion limit obtained in the di-tau final state by any collider experiment so far.