Z+jet production at NNLO

Abstract

We give a brief overview of our calculation of the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD corrections to Z+jet production in hadronic collisions. Phenomenological results are presented which comprise various differential distributions for 8 TeV proton-proton collisions. A significant reduction of the scale uncertainties is observed throughout as we move from NLO to NNLO. We further discuss how this calculation can be used to describe the inclusive Z-boson production at large transverse momentum. To this end, the theory prediction is compared to the measurements performed by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. Here, the inclusion of NNLO QCD effects are found to result in a substantial improvement in the agreement between theory and data for the normalised distributions.