Search for excited $τ$-leptons and leptoquarks in the final state with $τ$-leptons and jets in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search is reported for excited tau-leptons and leptoquarks in events with two hadronically decaying tau-leptons and two or more jets. The search uses proton-proton (pp) collision data at root s = 13 TeV recorded by the ATLAS experiment during the Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider in 2015-2018. The total integrated luminosity is 139 fb(-1). The excited tau-lepton is assumed to be produced and to decay via a four-fermion contact interaction into an ordinary tau-lepton and a quark-antiquark pair. The leptoquarks are assumed to be produced in pairs via the strong interaction, and each leptoquark is assumed to couple to a charm or lighter quark and a tau-lepton. No excess over the background prediction is observed. Excited tau-leptons with masses below 2.8 TeV are excluded at 95% CL in scenarios with the contact interaction scale Lambda set to 10 TeV. At the extreme limit of model validity where Lambda is set equal to the excited tau-lepton mass, excited tau-leptons with masses below 4.6 TeV are excluded. Leptoquarks with masses below 1.3 TeV are excluded at 95% CL if their branching ratio to a charm quark and a tau-lepton equals 1. The analysis does not exploit flavour-tagging in the signal region.