Transverse Energy-Energy Correlations in Next-to-Leading Order in $\alpha_s$ at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper calculates the transverse energy-energy correlation and its asymmetry at NLO in QCD for LHC proton-proton collisions, demonstrating their potential for precise tests of QCD and determination of the strong coupling constant.

Contribution

It provides the first NLO calculations of transverse EEC and AEEC in proton-proton collisions at the LHC, showing their insensitivity to various theoretical uncertainties.

Findings

EEC and AEEC are insensitive to scale choices and proton structure.

They can be used to accurately determine the strong coupling constant.

Results are demonstrated using anti-$k_T$ jet algorithm at 7 TeV.

Abstract

We compute the transverse energy-energy correlation (EEC) and its asymmetry (AEEC) in next-to-leading order (NLO) in $\alpha_s$ in proton-proton collisions at the LHC with the center-of-mass energy $E_{\rm c.m.}=7$ TeV. We show that the transverse EEC and the AEEC distributions are insensitive to the QCD factorization- and the renormalization-scales, structure functions of the proton, and for a judicious choice of the jet-size, also the underlying minimum bias events. Hence they can be used to precisely test QCD in hadron colliders and determine the strong coupling $\alpha_s$. We illustrate these features by defining the hadron jets using the anti-$k_T$ jet algorithm and an event selection procedure employed in the analysis of jets at the LHC and show the $\alpha_s(M_Z)$-dependence of the transverse EEC and the AEEC in the anticipated range $0.11 \leq \alpha_s(M_Z) \leq 0.13$.