Measurement of the production cross section of pairs of isolated photons in pppp collisions at 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

ATLAS COLLABORATION, G. AAD, M.T. DOVA ET AL

JOURNAL OF HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS

SPRINGER

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2021

1126-6708

A measurement of prompt photon-pair production in proton-proton collisions at 𝑠√ = 13 TeV is presented. The data were recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC with an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1. Events with two photons in the well-instrumented region of the detector are selected. The photons are required to be isolated and have a transverse momentum of 𝑝T,𝛾1(2) > 40 (30) GeV for the leading (sub-leading) photon. The differential cross sections as functions of several observables for the diphoton system are measured and compared with theoretical predictions from state-of-the-art Monte Carlo and fixed-order calculations. The QCD predictions from next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations and multi-leg merged calculations are able to describe the measured integrated and differential cross sections within uncertainties, whereas lower-order calculations show significant deviations, demonstrating that higher-order perturbative QCD corrections are crucial for this process. The resummed predictions with parton showers additionally provide an excellent description of the low transverse-momentum regime of the diphoton system.