Next-to-Next-to Leading Order QCD Predictions for Single Jet Inclusive Production at the LHC

We report the first calculation of fully differential jet production at leading color in all partonic channels at next-to-next-to leading order in perturbative QCD and compare to the available ATLAS 7 TeV data. We discuss the size and shape of the perturbative corrections along with their associated scale variation across a wide range in jet transverse momentum, $p_T$, and rapidity, $y$. We find significant effects, especially at low $p_T$, and discuss the possible implications for parton distribution function fits.

Figure 1

Double-differential inclusive jet cross sections measurement by ATLAS [6] and NNLO perturbative QCD predictions as a function of the jet $p_T$ in slices of rapidity, for anti-$k_T$ jets with $R=0.4$ normalized to the NLO result. The shaded bands represent the scale uncertainty of the theory predictions obtained by varying ${\mu }_R$ and ${\mu }_F$ as described in the text. The red dashed line displays the NNLO/NLO ratio corrected multiplicatively for electroweak corrections [37].

Figure 2

NLO and NNLO $k$-factors for jet production at $\sqrt{s}=7\mathrm{TeV}$. The lines correspond to the double-differential $k$-factors (ratios of perturbative predictions in the perturbative expansion) for $p_T>100\mathrm{GeV}$ and across six rapidity $|y|$ slices.

Figure 3

The single inclusive cross section in three $p_T$ bins: (left) 100–116, (center) 290–318, and (right) 642–688 GeV, plotted against the normalized scale choice ${\mu }_R/p_{T_1}$. Points represent the LO, NLO, and NNLO cross section as computed by nnlojet at ${\mu }_R/p_{T_1}=0.5$, 1, 2 and ${\mu }_F/p_{T_1}=1$. The solid lines represent the renormalization group equation (RGE) solution for the scale variation, computed with $p_T$ as the evolution parameter and ${\mu }_F/p_{T_1}=1$. Long and short dashed lines represent the same quantities evaluated with ${\mu }_F/p_{T_1}=0.5$ and ${\mu }_F/p_{T_1}=2$, respectively.