Dijet cross sections in ep collisions: who is afraid of symmetric cuts?

TL;DR

This paper analyzes three common methods for defining jet energy cuts in ep collisions, revealing inherent unphysical behaviors and demonstrating that symmetric cuts are as valid as other scenarios for NLO QCD comparisons.

Contribution

It identifies the universal unphysical behavior in dijet cross section definitions and clarifies the validity of symmetric cuts for theoretical comparisons.

Findings

All three cut scenarios exhibit unphysical behavior under additional constraints.

Symmetric cut scenario is equally suitable for NLO QCD comparison as other scenarios.

The unphysical behavior is inherent in the definition of dijet cross sections.

Abstract

Three widely used scenaria for defining cuts on transverse energies of jets in ep collisions are discussed. All of them are shown to suffer from the same sort of unphysical behaviour when the cut regions are subject to additional constraints. This feature is inherent in the very way dijet cross sections are defined and cannot be avoided. In particular, the symmetric cut scenario is shown to be equally suitable for the comparison with NLO QCD calculations as the asymmetric or sum-like ones.