Underlying event characteristics and their dependence on jet size of charged-particle jet events in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

TL;DR

This study investigates how underlying event characteristics in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV depend on jet size, using ATLAS data, and compares results with various Monte Carlo models to improve their accuracy.

Contribution

It provides detailed measurements of underlying event observables as functions of jet size and transverse momentum, highlighting the R-dependence and testing Monte Carlo predictions.

Findings

Multiplicity and scalar sum vary significantly with R

Average charged-particle pT has minimal R dependence

Pythia 6 with LHC tunes agrees reasonably with data

Abstract

Distributions sensitive to the underlying event are studied in events containing one or more charged-particle jets produced in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). These measurements reflect 800 inverse microbarns of data taken during 2010. Jets are reconstructed using the antikt algorithm with radius parameter R varying between 0.2 and 1.0. Distributions of the charged-particle multiplicity, the scalar sum of the transverse momentum of charged particles, and the average charged-particle pT are measured as functions of pT^JET in regions transverse to and opposite the leading jet for 4 GeV < pT^JET < 100 GeV. In addition, the R-dependence of the mean values of these observables is studied. In the transverse region, both the multiplicity and the scalar sum of the transverse momentum at fixed pT^JET vary significantly with R, while the average charged-particle transverse momentum has a minimal dependence on R. Predictions from several Monte Carlo tunes have been compared to the data; the predictions from Pythia 6, based on tunes that have been determined using LHC data, show reasonable agreement with the data, including the dependence on R. Comparisons with other generators indicate that additional tuning of soft-QCD parameters is necessary for these generators. The measurements presented here provide a testing ground for further development of the Monte Carlo models.