Reconstruction and identification of pairs of collimated $\tau$-leptons decaying hadronically using $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV $pp$ collision data with the ATLAS detector

This paper describes an algorithm for reconstructing and identifying a highly collimated hadronically decaying $\tau$-lepton pair with low transverse momentum. When two $\tau$-leptons are highly collimated, their visible decay products might overlap, degrading the reconstruction performance for each of the $\tau$-leptons. This requires a dedicated treatment that attempts to tag it as a single object. The reconstruction algorithm is based on a large radius jet and its associated two leading subjets, and the identification uses a boosted decision tree to discriminate between signatures from $\tau^+\tau^-$ systems and those arising from QCD jets. The efficiency of the identification algorithm is measured in $Z\gamma$ events using proton-proton collision data at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider between 2015 and 2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 $\mbox{fb}^{-1}$. The resulting data-to-simulation scale factors are close to unity with uncertainties ranging from 26% to 37%.