Jet rates in electron-positron annihilation at O(\alpha_s^3) in QCD

Abstract

We compute production rates for two, three, four and five jets in electron-positron annihilation at the third order in the QCD coupling constant. At this order, three-jet production is described to next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbation theory while the two-jet rate is obtained at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N$^3$LO). Our results yield an improved perturbative description of the dependence of jet multiplicity on the jet resolution parameter, $\ycut$, particularly at small values of $\ycut$.