Z-boson production in association with a jet at next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD

TL;DR

This paper presents the first complete NNLO calculation of Z-boson production with a jet in proton-proton collisions, significantly reducing theoretical uncertainties for precision LHC studies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel NNLO calculation method for Z+jet production using the N-jettiness subtraction scheme, enabling more accurate predictions.

Findings

Theoretical uncertainties are reduced to percent-level.

Results are applicable for 13 TeV LHC proton-proton collisions.

The calculation is ready for precision phenomenology at the LHC.

Abstract

We present the first complete calculation of Z-boson production in association with a jet in hadronic collisions through next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD. Our computation uses the recently-proposed N-jettiness subtraction scheme to regulate the infrared divergences that appear in the real-emission contributions. We present phenomenological results for 13 TeV proton-proton collisions with fully realistic fiducial cuts on the final-state particles. The remaining theoretical uncertainties after the inclusion of our calculations are at the percent-level, making the Z+jet channel ready for precision studies at the LHC Run II.