Towards e+e- --> 3 jets at NNLO by sector decomposition

Abstract

A method based on sector decomposition has been developed to calculate the double real radiation part of the process e+e- to 3 jets at next-to-next-to-leading order. It is shown in an example that the numerical cancellation of soft and collinear poles works well. The method is flexible to include an arbitrary measurement function in the final Monte Carlo program, such that it allows to obtain differential distributions for different kinds of observables. This is demonstrated by showing 3-, 4- and 5-jet rates at order alpha_s^3 for a subpart of the process.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure