Search for lepton-flavour violation in high-mass dilepton final states using 139 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ of $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search is performed for a heavy particle decaying into different-flavour, dilepton final states, using 139 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV collected in 2015-2018 by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Final states with electrons, muons and hadronically decaying tau leptons are considered ($e\mu$, $e\tau$ or $\mu\tau$). No significant excess over the Standard Model predictions is observed. Upper limits on the production cross-section are set as a function of the mass of a Z' boson, a supersymmetric $\tau$-sneutrino, and a quantum black-hole. The observed 95% CL lower mass limits obtained on a typical benchmark model Z' boson are 5.0 TeV (e$\mu$), 4.0 TeV (e$\tau$), and 3.9 TeV ($\mu\tau$), respectively.Comment: 47 pages in total, author list starting page 30, 6 figures, 7 tables, submitted to Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP). All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/EXOT-2019-20