This paper presents a measurement of the inclusive 3-jet production differential cross section at a proton-proton centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 inverse femtobarns collected with the CMS detector. The analysis is based on the three jets with the highest transverse momenta. The cross section is measured as a function of the invariant mass of the three jets in a range of 445-3270 GeV and in two bins of the maximum rapidity of the jets up to a value of 2. A comparison between the measurement and the prediction from perturbative QCD at next-to-leading order is performed. Within uncertainties, data and theory are in agreement. The sensitivity of the observable to the strong coupling constant alpha[S] is studied. A fit to all data points with 3-jet masses larger than 664 GeV gives a value of the strong coupling constant of alpha[S](MZ) = 0.1171 +/- 0.0013 (exp) +0.0073/-0.0047 (theo).
Measured 3-jet mass cross section with uncertainties.
Overview of the NP correction factors and their uncertainties in the inner and outer rapidity region.
Determinations of $\alpha_s(M_Z)$ in the considered $m_3$ ranges.
The ratio of the number of W+1 jet to W+0 jet events is measured with the D0 detector using data from the 1992–93 Tevatron Collider run. For the W→eν channel with a minimum jet ET cutoff of 25 GeV, the experimental ratio is 0.065±0.003stat±0.007syst. Next-to-leading order QCD predictions for various parton distributions agree well with each other and are all over 1 standard deviation below the measurement. Varying the strong coupling constant αs in both the parton distributions and the partonic cross sections simultaneously does not remove this discrepancy.
Two values of ALPHA_S corresponds the two different parton distribution functions (pdf) used in extraction of ALPHA_S from the ratio. The dominant systematic error is from the jet energy scale uncertainty.