Dominant QCD Backgrounds in Higgs Boson Analyses at the LHC: A Study of pp -> t anti-t + 2 jets at Next-To-Leading Order

TL;DR

This paper presents a next-to-leading order simulation of top quark pair production with two jets at the LHC, showing small negative corrections and consistent scale variation, aiding in understanding QCD backgrounds for Higgs analyses.

Contribution

It provides the first NLO simulation of pp -> t anti-t + 2 jets, improving the accuracy of background modeling in Higgs boson studies at the LHC.

Findings

NLO corrections are negative and reach 11%.

Scale variation errors are comparable to correction size.

Reproduces previous results for single jet production.

Abstract

We report the results of a next-to-leading order simulation of top quark pair production in association with two jets. With our inclusive cuts, we show that the corrections with respect to leading order are negative and small, reaching 11%. The error obtained by scale variation is of the same order. Additionally, we reproduce the result of a previous study of top quark pair production in association with a single jet.