CERN-LHC. A search for electroweak production of supersymmetric particles is performed in two-lepton and three-lepton final states using recursive jigsaw reconstruction. The search uses data collected in 2015 and 2016 by the ATLAS experiment in $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV proton--proton collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.1 $\textrm{fb}^{-1}$. Chargino--neutralino pair production, with decays via $W/Z$ bosons, is studied in final states involving leptons and jets and missing transverse momentum for scenarios with large and intermediate mass-splittings between the parent particle and lightest supersymmetric particle, as well as for the scenario where this mass splitting is close to the mass of the $Z$ boson. The latter case is challenging since the vector bosons are produced with kinematic properties that are similar to those in Standard Model processes. Results are found to be compatible with the Standard Model expectations in the signal regions targeting large and intermediate mass-splittings, and chargino--neutralino masses up to 600 GeV are excluded at 95% confidence level for a massless lightest supersymmetric particle. Excesses of data above the expected background are found in the signal regions targeting low mass-splittings, and the largest local excess amounts to 3.0 standard deviations.

Distributions of kinematic variables in the signal regions for the $2\ell$ channels after applying all selection requirements. The histograms show the post-fit background predictions. The last bin includes the overflow. The distribution for $R_{\textrm{ISR}}$ in SR$2\ell$_ISR is plotted. The expected distribution for a benchmark signal model, normalized to the NLO+NLL cross-section times integrated luminosity, is also shown for comparison.