Measurement of the production cross section of jets in association with a Z boson in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

TL;DR

This paper reports measurements of jet production cross sections in association with Z bosons in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV, comparing results with theoretical predictions from QCD calculations and Monte Carlo simulations.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed measurement of Z+jets cross sections at 7 TeV with ATLAS, testing perturbative QCD and Monte Carlo models against experimental data.

Findings

Measured inclusive and differential jet cross sections

Good agreement with NLO QCD calculations

Discrepancies with some Monte Carlo predictions

Abstract

Measurements of the production of jets of particles in association with a Z boson in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV are presented, using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.6/fb collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Inclusive and differential jet cross sections in Z events, with Z decaying into electron or muon pairs, are measured for jets with transverse momentum pT > 30 GeV and rapidity |y| < 4.4. The results are compared to next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD calculations, and to predictions from different Monte Carlo generators based on leading-order and next-to-leading-order matrix elements supplemented by parton showers.