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

Radja Boughezal; Christfried Focke; Xiaohui Liu; Frank Petriello

Paper

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

Abstract

We present the complete calculation of

-boson production in association with a jet in hadronic collisions through next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD. To cancel infrared divergences we introduce a new subtraction method that exploits the fact that the

-jettiness event-shape variable fully captures the singularity structure of QCD amplitudes with final-state partons. This method holds for processes with an arbitrary number of jets, and is easily implemented into existing frameworks for higher-order calculations. We present initial phenomenological results for

+jet production at the LHC. The NNLO corrections are small and lead to a significantly reduced theoretical error, opening the door to precision measurements in the

+jet channel at the LHC.