Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to five jet production at the LHC

Abstract

We present theoretical predictions for five jet production in proton-proton collisions at next-to-leading order accuracy in QCD. Inclusive as well as differential observables are studied for collision energies of 7 and 8 TeV. In general the next-to-leading order corrections stabilize the theoretical predictions with respect to scale variations. In case of the inclusive jet cross sections, we compare with experimental data where possible and find reasonable agreement. We observe that the four-to-three and five-to-four jet ratios show better perturbative convergence than the known three-to-two ratio and are promising candidates for future alpha_s measurements. Furthermore, we present a detailed analysis of uncertainties related to parton distribution functions. The full colour virtual matrix elements used in the computation were obtained with the NJet package, a publicly available library for the evaluation of one-loop amplitudes in massless QCD.