Detailed Comparison of Next-to-Leading Order Predictions for Jet Photoproduction at HERA

TL;DR

This paper compares three NLO QCD predictions for jet photoproduction at HERA, showing overall agreement but noting differences up to 5% in specific phase space regions, aiding photon structure studies.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of three different NLO calculations for jet photoproduction, assessing their agreement and differences in the context of recent HERA data.

Findings

All three calculations agree within statistical errors.

Differences up to 5% occur in certain phase space regions.

The predictions are reliable for most of the analyzed phase space.

Abstract

The precision of new HERA data on jet photoproduction opens up the possibility to discriminate between different models of the photon structure. This requires equally precise theoretical predictions from perturbative QCD calculations. In the past years, next-to-leading order calculations for the photoproduction of jets at HERA have become available. Using the kinematic cuts of recent ZEUS analyses, we compare the predictions of three calculations for different dijet and three-jet distributions. We find that in general all three calculations agree within the statistical accuracy of the Monte Carlo integration yielding reliable theoretical predictions. In certain restricted regions of phase space, the calculations differ by up to 5%.