Higher Order Corrections to Jet Cross Sections in Hadron Colliders

TL;DR

This work extends a general NLO framework for final-state infrared and collinear divergences to hadron-hadron collisions by introducing universal initial-state crossing functions. It derives the factorization of initial-state collinear phase space, the corresponding matrix-element behavior, and the mass-factorization scheme needed to yield finite, process-independent crossing functions that augment LO cross sections. The authors provide explicit, fully differential NLO calculations for vector-boson production with 0 and 1 associated jets, including vector-boson decays, and validate that results are largely independent of the arbitrary parton-resolution parameter s_min. The approach enables flexible Monte Carlo implementations that accommodate arbitrary jet algorithms and experimental cuts, and it lays groundwork for extending to multi-jet final states and more complex hadronic processes.

Abstract

We describe a general method of calculating the fully differential cross section for the production of jets at next-to-leading order in a hadron collider. This method is based on a `crossing' of next-to-leading order calculations with all partons in the final state. The method introduces universal crossing functions that allow a modular approach to next-to-leading order calculations for any process with initial state partons. These techniques are applied to the production of jets in association with a vector boson including all decay correlations of the final state observables.