ATLAS collaboration (2866 authors)Aguilar-Saavedra, Juan AntonioAmor Dos Santos, Susana PatriciaAnjos, NunoAraque, Juan PedroCantrill, RobertCarvalho, JoãoCastro, Nuno FilipeConde Muiño, PatriciaDa Cunha Sargedas De Sousa, Mario JoseFiolhais, MiguelGalhardo, BrunoGomes, AgostinhoGonçalo, RicardoJorge, PedroLopes, LourencoMachado Miguens, JoanaMaio, AméliaManeira, JoséOnofre, AntónioPalma, AlbertoPedro, RutePina, João AntonioSantos, HelenaSaraiva, JoãoSilva, JoséTavares Delgado, AdemarVeloso, FilipeWolters, Helmut2019-02-042019-02-042016-04-16http://dx.doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-4034-8http://hdl.handle.net/10400.26/26933Results of a search for new phenomena in events with at least three photons are reported. Data from proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb$^{-1}$ , were collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The observed data are well described by the Standard Model. Limits at the 95 % confidence level on new phenomena are presented based on the rate of events in an inclusive signal region and a restricted signal region targeting the rare decay $Z\rightarrow 3\gamma $ , as well as di-photon and tri-photon resonance searches. For a Standard Model Higgs boson decaying to four photons via a pair of intermediate pseudoscalar particles (a), limits are found to be $\sigma \times {\text{ BR }}(h \rightarrow aa) \times {\text{ BR }}(a \rightarrow \gamma \gamma )^{2} < 10^{-3} \sigma _{\text {SM}}$ for 10 GeV $< m_{a} <$ 62 GeV. Limits are also presented for Higgs boson-like scalars (H) for $m_{H} > $ 125 GeV, and for a $Z'$ decaying to three photons via $Z' \rightarrow a+\gamma \rightarrow 3\gamma $ . Additionally, the observed limit on the branching ratio of the Z boson decay to three photons is found to be BR $(Z \rightarrow 3\gamma ) < 2.2 \times 10^{-6}$ , a result five times stronger than the previous result from LEP.engjournal article2019-02-04