A search for an excess of events with multiple high transverse momentum objects including charged leptons and jets is presented, using 20.3 fb −1 of proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012 at a centre-of-mass energy of √ s = 8 TeV. No excess of events beyond Standard Model expectations is observed. Using extra-dimensional models for black hole and string ball production and decay, exclusion contours are determined as a function of the mass threshold for production and the fundamental gravity scale for two, four and six extra dimensions. For six extra dimensions, mass thresholds of 4.8-6.2 TeV are excluded at 95% confidence level, depending on the fundamental gravity scale and model assumptions. Upper limits on the fiducial cross-sections for non-Standard Model production of these final states are set. 6 Event selection 8 7 Background estimation 9 7.1 Prompt background estimation from control regions 9 7.2 Backgrounds from misidentified objects and non-prompt leptons 13 7.3 Background smoothing with fits 148 Systematic uncertainties 159 Results and interpretation 17
Summary 25The ATLAS collaboration 32
IntroductionA long-standing problem in particle physics is the very large difference between two apparently fundamental energy scales: the electroweak scale at O(0.1 TeV) and the gravitational (Planck) scale M Pl = O(10 16 TeV). Models postulating extra spatial dimensions into which the gravitational field propagates attempt to address this hierarchy problem [1][2][3][4]. In most of these models, the Standard Model (SM) fields are constrained to the one time and three spatial dimensions of our universe, whilst the gravitons also propagate into the n "bulk" extra dimensions. In these models, the fundamental gravitational scale in the full (n + 4) space-time dimensions, M D , is dramatically lower than M Pl , and represents an effective scale appropriate for probes of the gravitational interactions at low energies. A value of M D in the TeV range would allow for the production of strong gravitational states such as microscopic black holes at energies accessible at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) [5][6][7]. Two well-motivated extra-dimensional models are those with large flat extra dimensions -1 -
JHEP08(2014)103(ADD models [2,3]) and those with small, usually warped, extra dimensions (RS models [4]). This analysis considers ADD models, for which the n = 1 case is ruled out and the n = 2 case is disfavoured by current astrophysical and tabletop experiments [8]. Thus, benchmark models with two, four and six additional spatial dimensions are considered.Estimates of the black hole production cross-sections invoke semiclassical approximations, the validity of which require the production centre-of-mass energy to be significantly above M D . This motivates the introduction of a production mass threshold M th , well above M D . In the black hole formation stage, some energy is expected to be lost to gravitational or SM radiation. This has recently been calcu...