The performance of missing transverse momentum reconstruction and its significance with the ATLAS detector using 140 $$\hbox {fb}^{-1}$$ of $$\sqrt{s}=13$$ TeV pp collisions

This paper presents the reconstruction of missing transverse momentum (pmissT ) in proton–proton collisions, at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. This is a challenging task involving many detector inputs, combining fully calibrated electrons, muons, photons, hadronically decaying τ -leptons, hadronic jets, and soft activity from remaining tracks. Possible double counting of momentum is avoided by applying a signal ambiguity resolution procedure which rejects detector inputs that have already been used. Several pmissT ‘working points’ are defined with varying stringency of selections, the tightest improving the resolution at high pile-up by up to 39% compared to the loosest. The pmissT performance is evaluated using data and Monte Carlo simulation, with an emphasis on understanding the impact of pile-up, primarily using events consistent with leptonic Z decays. The studies use 140 fb−1 of data, collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider between 2015 and 2018. The results demonstrate that pmissT reconstruction, and its associated significance, are well understood and reliably modelled by simulation. Finally, the systematic uncertainties on the soft pmissT component are calculated. After various improvements the scale and resolution uncertainties are reduced by up to 76% and 51%, respectively, compared to the previous calculation at a lower luminosity.