The ATLAS Measurements of Jet Production and the Strong Coupling Constant

Abstract

The production of jets at hadron colliders provides a stringent test of perturbative QCD at the highest energies. The process can also be used to probe the gluon density in the parton distribution function of the proton. Specific topologies can be used to extract the strong coupling constant. The ATLAS collaboration has recently measured the inclusive jet production cross section in data collected at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV and 13 TeV at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The measurements have been performed differentially in jet rapidity and transverse momentum. The collaboration also presents a first measurement of the dijet cross section at a center-of-mass energy of 13~TeV as a function of the dijet invariant mass and rapidity. The results have been compared with state-of-the-art theory predictions at NLO in pQCD, interfaced with different parton distribution functions and can be used to constrain the proton structure. We also present new measurements of transverse energy-energy correlations (TEEC) and their associated asymmetries (ATEEC) in multi-jet events at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The data is unfolded to the particle level and compared to the expectations from parton shower Monte Carlo programs as well as from NLO pQCD calculations. The latter are also used to extract the strong coupling constant and test the renormalization group equation.