Observation of the associated production of a top quark and a Z boson in pp collisions at $$ \sqrt{s} $$= 13 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, S. Adachi, L. Adámek, 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, F. Ahmadov, W. S. Ahmed, X. Ai, G. Aielli, S. Akatsuka, 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, M. Aliev, G. Alimonti, C. Allaire, B. M. M. Allbrooke, B. W. Allen, P. P. Allport, A. Aloisio, F. Alonso, C. Alpigiani, A. A. Alshehri, Elio Alunno Camelia, M. Alvarez Estevez, M. G. Alviggi, Y. Amaral Coutinho, A. Ambler, L. Ambroz, Christoph Amelung, D. Amidei, D. Roda Dos Santos, S. Amoroso, C. S. Amrouche, F. F. An, C. Anastopoulos, N. Andari, T. Andeen, C. F. Anders, J. K. Anders, 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, L. Aperio Bella, J. P. Araque, V. Araujo Ferraz, R. Araujo Pereira, C. Arcangeletti, A. T. H. Arce
Abstract
A bstract Single top-quark production in association with a Z boson, where the Z boson decays to a pair of charged leptons, is measured in the trilepton channel. The proton-proton collision data collected by the ATLAS experiment from 2015 to 2018 at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV are used, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb − 1 . Events containing three isolated charged leptons (electrons or muons) and two or three jets, one of which is identified as containing a b -hadron, are selected. The main backgrounds are from $$ t\overline{t}Z $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>t</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mi>t</mml:mi> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> <mml:mi>Z</mml:mi> </mml:math> and diboson production. Neural networks are used to improve the background rejection and extract the signal. The measured cross-section for t ℓ + ℓ − q production, including non-resonant dilepton pairs with $$ {m}_{{\mathrm{\ell}}^{+}{\mathrm{\ell}}^{-}} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>m</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>ℓ</mml:mi> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> </mml:msup> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>ℓ</mml:mi> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> </mml:math> > 30 GeV, is 97 ± 13 (stat.) ± 7 (syst.) fb, consistent with the Standard Model prediction.