We present the cross section for production of a $Z$ boson in association with four jets at the Large Hadron Collider, at next-to-leading order in the QCD coupling. When the $Z$ decays to neutrinos, this process is a key irreducible background to many searches for new physics. Its computation has been made feasible through the development of the on-shell approach to perturbative quantum field theory. We present the total cross section for $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7\mathrm{TeV}$, after folding in the decay of the $Z$ boson, or virtual photon, to a charged-lepton pair. We also provide distributions of the transverse momenta of the four jets, and we compare cross sections and distributions to the corresponding ones for the production of a $W$ boson with accompanying jets.

• Received 14 August 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.85.031501