$Z$-plus-jet Production with JETHAD-DYnamis: Angular Structure, Polarization, Fixed-Order Matching

Abstract

Recent NLO analyses of inclusive Higgs production indicate that high-energy resummation corrections can reach the 10\% level, highlighting the growing impact of high-energy QCD dynamics on electroweak observables from LHC to FCC energies. We extend this precision program to Drell-Yan plus jet production by deriving high-energy-resummed predictions for rapidity and transverse-momentum distributions of electroweak bosons. Fixed-order NLO accuracy is consistently combined with next-to-leading energy-logarithmic resummation (NLL/NLO). We outline a JETHAD-DYnamis-POWHEG matching strategy that retains polarization and angular correlations while enabling realistic lepton-level kinematics. This setup provides the first high-energy-resummed description of rapidity-separated electroweak-boson plus jet final states. The resulting framework offers a precision-oriented description of Drell-Yan observables for present LHC measurements and the High-Luminosity LHC, where percent-level theoretical control will become increasingly important.