We present the first measurement of the inclusive three-jet differential cross section as a function of the invariant mass of the three jets with the largest transverse momenta in an event in p anti-p collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV. The measurement is made in different rapidity regions and for different jet transverse momentum requirements and is based on a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.7 fb^{-1} collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. The results are used to test the three-jet matrix elements in perturbative QCD calculations at next-to-leading order in the strong coupling constant. The data allow discrimination between parametrizations of the parton distribution functions of the proton.
The global topologies of inclusive three-- and four--jet events produced in $\pp$ interactions are described. The three-- and four--jet events are selected from data recorded by the D\O\ detector at the Tevatron Collider operating at a center--of--mass energy of $\sqrt{s} = 1800$ GeV. The measured, normalized distributions of various topological variables are compared with parton--level predictions of tree--level QCD calculations. The parton--level QCD calculations are found to be in good agreement with the data. The studies also show that the topological distributions of the different subprocesses involving different numbers of quarks are very similar and reproduce the measured distributions well. The parton shower Monte Carlo generators provide a less satisfactory description of the topologies of the three-- and four--jet events.
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