Measurement of dijet production with a veto on additional central jet activity in pp collisions at 7 TeV using the ATLAS detector

TL;DR

This paper measures jet activity between dijets in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV, comparing results to various theoretical models and simulations, and finds that NLO predictions with parton showers best match the data.

Contribution

First detailed measurement of central jet veto activity in pp collisions at 7 TeV, providing data to test and refine QCD models and event generators.

Findings

POWHEG+PYTHIA best describes the data

Experimental uncertainties are smaller than model spread

Data constrains QCD modeling of jet activity

Abstract

A measurement of jet activity in the rapidity interval bounded by a dijet system is performed using pp collisions at 7 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector in 2010. The data are compared to LO predictions from PYTHIA, HERWIG++ and ALPGEN event generators. The data are also compared to NLO parton shower prediction from POWHEG, when interfaced to PYTHIA or HERWIG parton shower, and all order resummation prediction from HEJ. In most of the phase-space regions presented, the experimental uncertainty is much smaller than the spread of LO Monte Carlo event generator predictions. In general, POWHEG+PYTHIA gave the best description of the data.