Evidence for $$t\bar{t}t\bar{t}$$ production in the multilepton final state in proton–proton collisions at $$\sqrt{s}=13$$ $$\text {TeV}$$ with the ATLAS detector
G. Aad, B. Abbott, D. C. Abbott, A. Abed Abud, K. Abeling, D. K. Abhayasinghe, S. H. Abidi, O. S. AbouZeid, N. L. Abraham, H. Abramowicz, H. Abreu, Y. Abulaiti, B. S. Acharya, B. Achkar, L. Adam, C. Adam Bourdarios, L. Adamczyk, L. Adámek, J. Adelman, M. Adersberger, A. Adıgüzel, S. Adorni, T. Adye, A. A. Affolder, Y. Afik, C. Agapopoulou, M. N. Agaras, A. Aggarwal, C. Agheorghiesei, J. A. Aguilar–Saavedra, A. Ahmad, F. Ahmadov, W. S. Ahmed, X. Ai, G. Aielli, S. Akatsuka, M. Akbiyik, T. P. A. Åkesson, E. Akilli, A. V. Akimov, K. Al Khoury, G. L. Alberghi, J. Albert, M. J. Alconada Verzini, S. Alderweireldt, M. Aleksa, I. N. Aleksandrov, C. Alexa, T. Alexopoulos, A. Alfonsi, F. Alfonsi, M. Alhroob, B. Ali, S. Ali, M. Aliev, G. Alimonti, C. Allaire, B. M. M. Allbrooke, B. W. Allen, P. P. Allport, A. Aloisio, F. Alonso, C. Alpigiani, Elio Alunno Camelia, M. Alvarez Estevez, M. G. Alviggi, Y. Amaral Coutinho, A. Ambler, L. Ambroz, C. Amelung, D. Amidei, S. P. Amor Dos Santos, S. Amoroso, C. S. Amrouche, F. F. An, C. Anastopoulos, N. Andari, T. Andeen, J. K. Anders, S. Y. Andrean, A. Andreazza, V. Andrei, C. R. Anelli, S. Angelidakis, A. Angerami, A. V. Anisenkov, A. Annovi, C. Antel, M. T. Anthony, E. Antipov, M. Antonelli, D. J. A. Antrim, F. Anulli, M. Aoki, J. A. Aparisi Pozo, M. A. Aparo, L. Aperio Bella, N. Aranzabal, V. Araujo Ferraz, R. Araujo Pereira
Abstract
Abstract A search is presented for four-top-quark production using an integrated luminosity of 139 fb $$^{-1}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow/> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math> of proton–proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of $$13~\text {TeV}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>13</mml:mn> <mml:mspace/> <mml:mtext>TeV</mml:mtext> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are selected if they contain a same-sign lepton pair or at least three leptons (electrons or muons). Jet multiplicity, jet flavour and event kinematics are used to separate signal from the background through a multivariate discriminant, and dedicated control regions are used to constrain the dominant backgrounds. The four-top-quark production cross section is measured to be $$24^{+7}_{-6}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mn>24</mml:mn> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mn>6</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>7</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> fb. This corresponds to an observed (expected) significance with respect to the background-only hypothesis of 4.3 (2.4) standard deviations and provides evidence for this process.