W-boson plus jet differential distributions at NNLO in QCD

Abstract: We present a detailed phenomenological study of W-boson production in association with a jet through next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbative QCD. Fiducial cross sections and differential distributions for both 8 TeV and 13 TeV LHC collisions are presented, as are results for both the inclusive one-jet bin and the exclusive one-jet bin. Two different event selection criteria are considered: a general selection with standard cuts used in experimental analyses, and a boosted selection that focuses on high transverse momentum jets. We discuss the higher-order corrections in detail and identify for which observables and phase space regions the QCD perturbative expansion is under good theoretical control, and where additional work is needed. For most distributions and phase space regions the QCD perturbative expansion exhibits good convergence after the inclusion of the NNLO corrections.