Extrapolating W-Associated Jet-Production Ratios at the LHC

Abstract

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, $H_T^{\mathrm{jets}}$; 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 $H_T^{\mathrm{jets}}$ 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.

Comments: RevTex, 60 pages, 25 tables, 19 figures