Abstract:We provide an updated recommendation for the usage of sets of parton distribution functions (PDFs) and the assessment of PDF and PDF+α s uncertainties suitable for applications at the LHC Run II. We review developments since the previous PDF4LHC recommendation, and discuss and compare the new generation of PDFs, which include substantial information from experimental data from the Run I of the LHC. We then propose a new prescription for the combination of a suitable subset of the available PDF sets, which is presented in terms of a single combined PDF set. We finally discuss tools which allow for the delivery of this combined set in terms of optimized sets of Hessian eigenvectors or Monte Carlo replicas, and their usage, and provide some examples of their application to LHC phenomenology. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Guido Altarelli (1941Altarelli ( -2015, whose seminal work made possible the quantitative study of parton distribution functions.

A measurement of the Higgs boson mass is presented based on the combined data samples of the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the CERN LHC in the H → γγ and H → ZZ → 4l decay channels. The results are obtained from a simultaneous fit to the reconstructed invariant mass peaks in the two channels and for the two experiments. The measured masses from the individual channels and the two experiments are found to be consistent among themselves. The combined measured mass of the Higgs boson is m H ¼ 125.09 AE 0.21 ðstatÞ AE 0.11 ðsystÞ GeV. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.191803 PACS numbers: 14.80.Bn, 13.85.Qk The study of the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking is one of the principal goals of the CERN LHC program. In the standard model (SM), this symmetry breaking is achieved through the introduction of a complex doublet scalar field, leading to the prediction of the Higgs boson H [1-6], whose mass m H is, however, not predicted by the theory. In 2012, the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations at the LHC announced the discovery of a particle with Higgs-boson-like properties and a mass of about 125 GeV [7][8][9]. The discovery was based primarily on mass peaks observed in the γγ and ZZ → l þ l − l 0þ l 0−(denoted H → ZZ → 4l for simplicity) decay channels, where one or both of the Z bosons can be off shell and where l and l 0 denote an electron or muon. With m H known, all properties of the SM Higgs boson, such as its production cross section and partial decay widths, can be predicted. Increasingly precise measurements [10][11][12][13] have established that all observed properties of the new particle, including its spin, parity, and coupling strengths to SM particles are consistent within the uncertainties with those expected for the SM Higgs boson.The ATLAS and CMS Collaborations have independently measured m H using the samples of proton-proton collision data collected in 2011 and 2012, commonly referred to as LHC Run 1. The analyzed samples correspond to approximately 5 fb −1 of integrated luminosity at ffiffi ffi s p ¼ 7 TeV, and 20 fb −1 at ffiffi ffi s p ¼ 8 TeV, for each experiment. Combined results in the context of the separate experiments, as well as those in the individual channels, are presented in Refs. [12,[14][15][16].This Letter describes a combination of the Run 1 data from the two experiments, leading to improved precision for m H . Besides its intrinsic importance as a fundamental parameter, improved knowledge of m H yields more precise predictions for the other Higgs boson properties. Furthermore, the combined mass measurement provides a first step towards combinations of other quantities, such as the couplings. In the SM, m H is related to the values of the masses of the W boson and top quark through loopinduced effects. Taking into account other measured SM quantities, the comparison of the measurements of the Higgs boson, W boson, and top quark masses can be used to directly test the consistency of the SM [17] and thus to search for evidence of physics beyond the SM.The combination is performed usin...

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This article documents the performance of the ATLAS muon identification and reconstruction using the LHC dataset recorded at  TeV in 2015. Using a large sample of and decays from 3.2 fb of pp collision data, measurements of the reconstruction efficiency, as well as of the momentum scale and resolution, are presented and compared to Monte Carlo simulations. The reconstruction efficiency is measured to be close to over most of the covered phase space ( and  GeV). The isolation efficiency varies between 93 and depending on the selection applied and on the momentum of the muon. Both efficiencies are well reproduced in simulation. In the central region of the detector, the momentum resolution is measured to be () for muons from () decays, and the momentum scale is known with an uncertainty of . In the region , the resolution for muons from decays is while the precision of the momentum scale for low- muons from decays is about .

During 2015 the ATLAS experiment recorded of proton–proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of . The ATLAS trigger system is a crucial component of the experiment, responsible for selecting events of interest at a recording rate of approximately 1 kHz from up to 40 MHz of collisions. This paper presents a short overview of the changes to the trigger and data acquisition systems during the first long shutdown of the LHC and shows the performance of the trigger system and its components based on the 2015 proton–proton collision data.