Book Description
"This thesis presents the measurement of the production cross sections of jets in association with a Z boson in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV with an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb−1 recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Inclusive and differential Z/[gamma]∗(→ e+e−)+jets cross sections are measured for jets with a transversemomentum pT(jet) > 30 GeV and rapidity |y(jet)| 4.4. Z boson candidates are identified by their decay into electron pairs. In order to stringently probe the modelling of Z/[gamma]∗+jets production by Monte Carlo generators in regions of high-pT phase space typical for Higgs boson decay and searches for new physics, events with high-pT final states are investigated. High-pT final states are defined as events with either pT(Z) 300 GeV or pT(leading jet) > 300 GeV. A set of four observables, sensitive to the topology of the event, are measured for the standard event selection as well as in the regions of high-pT phase space. The results from data are unfolded to particle level and compared to calculations of the matrix element from Monte Carlo generators Alpgen+Pythia and Sherpa interfaced to a parton shower. The results show that Sherpa tends to model Z/[gamma]∗+jets production in high-pT regions of phase space much better than Alpgen+Pythia." --