More Jets in more LHC searches

Multi jet observables are a powerful tool to new physics as well as a boost to standard analysis strategies. We show their use in a reasonably model independent dark matter search and a jet veto Higgs analysis. We find however that, these observables are plagued by huge theoretical uncertainties connected to unphysical scale parameters. In the democratic limit we compute analytically the all order resummed jet spectrum at leading log. It obeys so called staircase scaling. With the help of state of the art Monte Carlo tools we study the jet spectrum features in great detail. In addition we also study so called Poisson scaling. This allows us to develop a data driven strategy to fix the standard model multi jet backgrounds

Establishing jet scaling patterns with a photon

Staircase and Poisson scaling are two typical patterns we observe for the exclusive number of jets at high energy hadron colliders. We examine these scaling properties for photon plus jets production at the LHC and find that this channel is well suited to study these features. We illustrate and discuss when to expect each of the two patterns, how to induce a transition through kinematic cuts, and how photons are related to heavy gauge bosons. Measurements of photon+jets production is therefore providing valuable information on exclusive jet scaling, which is going to help to eventually understand the theoretical origin of exclusive jet scaling properties in more detail

Jets plus Missing Energy with an Autofocus

Jets plus missing transverse energy is one of the main search channels for new physics at the LHC. A major limitation lies in our understanding of QCD backgrounds. Using jet merging we can describe the number of jets in typical background channels in terms of a staircase scaling, including theory uncertainties. The scaling parameter depends on the particles in the final state and on cuts applied. Measuring the staircase scaling will allow us to also predict the effective mass for Standard Model backgrounds. Based on both observables we propose an analysis strategy avoiding model specific cuts which returns information about the color charge and the mass scale of the underlying new physics.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, 3 table

From Jet Counting to Jet Vetoes

The properties of multi-jet events impact many LHC analysis. The exclusive number of jets at hadron colliders can be described in terms of two simple patterns: staircase scaling and Poisson scaling. In photon plus jets production we can interpolate between the two patterns using simple kinematic cuts. The associated theoretical errors are well under control. Understanding such exclusive jet multiplicities significantly impacts Higgs searches and searches for supersymmetry at the LHC.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in the proceedings of XX International Workshop on Deep-Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects, 26th-30th March 2012, University of Bon

Stress-testing the VBF approximation in multijet final states

We consider electro-weak Higgs plus three jets production at NLO QCD beyond strict VBF acceptance cuts. We investigate, for the first time, how accurate the VBF approximation is in these regions and within perturbative uncertainties, by a detailed comparison of full and approximate calculations. We find that a rapidity gap between the tagging jets guarantees a good approximation, while an invariant mass cut alone is not sufficient, which needs to be confronted with experimental choices. We also find that a significant part of the QCD corrections can be attributed to Higgs-Strahlungs-type topologies.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, add VBSCAN report numbe

Herwig 7.1 Release Note

A new release of the Monte Carlo event generator Herwig (version 7.1) is now available. This version introduces a number of improvements, notably: multi-jet merging with the dipole shower at LO and NLO QCD; a new model for soft interactions and diffraction; improvements to mass effects and top decays in the dipole shower, as well as a new tune of the hadronisation parameters.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures. Herwig is available from https://herwig.hepforge.org