The simulation software for the ATLAS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider is being used for largescale production of events on the LHC Computing Grid. This simulation requires many components, from the generators that simulate particle collisions, through packages simulating the response of the various detectors and triggers. All of these components come together under the AT-LAS simulation infrastructure. In this paper, that infrastructure is discussed, including that supporting the detector description, interfacing the event generation, and combining the GEANT4 simulation of the response of the individual detectors. Also described are the tools allowing the software validation, performance testing, and the validation of the simulated output against known physics processes.

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A search for excited states of the Bc(±) meson is performed using 4.9  fb(-1) of 7 TeV and 19.2  fb(-1) of 8 TeV pp collision data collected by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. A new state is observed through its hadronic transition to the ground state, with the latter detected in the decay Bc(±)→J/ψπ(±). The state appears in the m(Bc(±)π(+)π(-))-m(Bc(±))-2m(π(±)) mass difference distribution with a significance of 5.2 standard deviations. The mass of the observed state is 6842±4±5  MeV, where the first error is statistical and the second is systematic. The mass and decay of this state are consistent with expectations for the second S-wave state of the Bc(±) meson, Bc(±)(2S).

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Search for new phenomena in high-mass diphoton final states using 37 fb −1 of proton-proton collisions collected at √ s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detectorThe ATLAS Collaboration Searches for new phenomena in high-mass diphoton final states with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC are presented. The analysis is based on pp collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.7 fb −1 at a centre-of-mass energy √ s = 13 TeV recorded in 2015 and 2016. Searches are performed for resonances with spin 0, as predicted by theories with an extended Higgs sector, and for resonances with spin 2, using a warped extra-dimension model as a benchmark model, as well as for non-resonant signals, assuming a large extradimension scenario. No significant deviation from the Standard Model is observed. Upper limits are placed on the production cross section times branching ratio to two photons as a function of the resonance mass. In addition, lower limits are set on the ultraviolet cutoff scale in the large extra-dimensions model. c 2017 CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS Collaboration. 1 The ATLAS experiment uses a right-handed coordinate system with its origin at the nominal interaction point (IP) in the centre of the detector and the z-axis along the beam pipe. The x-axis points from the IP to the centre of the LHC ring, and the y-axis points upward. Cylindrical coordinates (r, φ) are used in the transverse plane, φ being the azimuthal angle around the z-axis. The pseudorapidity is defined in terms of the polar angle θ as η = − ln tan(θ/2). The transverse energy is defined as3 Simulated Monte Carlo (MC) events are used for optimizing the search strategy [23], and for the signal and background modelling studies detailed in Sections 5 and 6, respectively. Interference effects between the resonant signal and the background processes are neglected.The spin-0 signal MC samples were generated using the effective-field-theory approach implemented in MadGraph5_aMC@NLO [24] version 2.3.3 at next-to-leading order (NLO) in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). From the Higgs characterization framework [25], CP-even dimension-five operators coupling the new resonance to gluons and photons were included. Samples were generated with the NNPDF3.0 NLO parton distribution functions (PDFs) [26], using the A14 set of tuned parameters (tune) of Pythia 8.186 [27,28] for the parton-shower and hadronization simulation. Simulated samples were produced for fixed values of the mass and width of the assumed resonance, spanning the range 200-2400 GeV for the mass, and the range from 4 MeV to 10% of the mass for the decay width. Choosing an improved signal model with an event generator different from the one used in Ref.[1] provides a description of the signal which is less sensitive to modelling effects from the off-shell region. The impact of this change is only visible in scenarios with a large signal decay width, with mass values at the TeV scale.Spin-2 signal samples for the RS1 model were generated using Pythia 8.186, with the NNPDF23LO PDF set [29] and the A1...