Extrapolating W -associated jet-production ratios at the LHC

• Published in: Physical review. D, Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology, 2015-07, Vol.92 (1), Article 014008
• Main Authors: Bern, Z., Dixon, L. J., Febres Cordero, F., Höche, S., Ita, H., Kosower, D. A., Maître, D.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
• ISSN: 1550-7998; 1550-2368
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.92.014008

Electroweak vector-boson production, accompanied by multiple jets, is an important background to searches for physics beyond the standard model. A precise and quantitative understanding of this process is helpful in constraining deviations from known physics. We study four key ratios in W + n -jet production at the LHC. We compute the ratio of cross sections for W + n - to W + (n-1)-jet production as a function of the minimum jet transverse momentum. We also study the ratio differentially, as a function of the W-boson transverse momentum; as a function of the scalar sum of the jet transverse energy, H$jets\atop{T}$; and as a function of certain jet transverse momenta. We show how to use such ratios to extrapolate differential cross sections to W + 6 -jet production at next-to-leading order, and we cross-check the method against a direct calculation at leading order. We predict the differential distribution in H$jets\atop{T}$ for W + 6 jets at next-to-leading order using such an extrapolation. We use the BlackHat software library together with SHERPA to perform the computations.