On jet mass distributions in Z+jet and dijet processes at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper provides an analytical calculation of jet mass distributions in Z+jet and dijet processes at the LHC, incorporating effects like initial state radiation and non-global logarithms, with implications for jet substructure studies.

Contribution

It introduces a next-to-leading logarithmic analytical computation of jet mass distributions including initial state radiation and non-global logarithms at hadron colliders.

Findings

Analytical jet mass distributions match well with Monte Carlo simulations.

Initial state radiation and non-global logarithms significantly affect jet mass spectra.

Dependence of jet mass on jet radius R is explicitly characterized.

Abstract

The mass distribution of jets produced in hard processes at the LHC plays an important role in several jet substructure related studies involving both Standard Model and BSM physics, especially in the context of boosted heavy particle searches. We compute analytically the jet-mass distribution for both Z+jet and dijet processes, for QCD jets defined in the anti-k_t algorithm with an arbitrary radius R, to next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy and match our resummed calculation to full leading-order results. We note the important role played by initial state radiation (ISR) and non-global logarithms explicitly computed here for the first time for hadron collider observables, as well as the jet radius dependence of these effects. We also compare our results to standard Monte Carlo event generators and discuss directions for further studies and phenomenology.