Resummation of jet mass with and without a jet veto

Abstract: Calculating the distribution of jet masses in high-energy collisions is challenging because fixed-order perturbation theory breaks down near the peak region, and because multiple scales complicate the resummation. To avoid using a jet veto, one can consider inclusive observables, in which every particle is in a jet. We demonstrate that calculating the mass of the hardest jet in multijet events can be problematic, and we give an example of an inclusive observable, asymmetric thrust, which can be resummed to next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. Exclusive observables with out-of-jet regions are more complicated. Even for e+e- dijet events at energy Q, to calculate the mass m of jets of size R, one must impose a veto on the energy omega of extra jets to force dijet kinematics; then there are both log m/Q and log m/omega singularities. To proceed, we suggest a refactorization of the soft function in the small R limit. To justify this refactorization, we show that the expansion of the resummed distribution is in excellent agreement with fixed order. This motivates considering the expansion around small R as a useful handle on producing phenomenologically useful resummed jet mass distributions. The strong evidence we give for refactorization at small R is independent of non-global logarithms, which are not the subject of this paper.