Measurement of the inclusive cross-section for the production of jets in association with a Z boson in proton–proton collisions at 8 TeV using the ATLAS detector

The inclusive cross-section for jet production in association with a Z boson decaying into an electron–positron pair is measured as a function of the transverse momentum and the absolute rapidity of jets using 19.9 fb ${}^{-1}$ of $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV proton–proton collision data collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The measured $Z\phantom{\rule{0.333333em}{0ex}}\text{+ jets}$ cross-section is unfolded to the particle level. The cross-section is compared with state-of-the-art Standard Model calculations, including the next-to-leading-order and next-to-next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD calculations, corrected for non-perturbative and QED radiation effects. The results of the measurements cover final-state jets with transverse momenta up to 1 TeV, and show good agreement with fixed-order calculations.