Measurement of Energy Correlators inside Jets and Determination of the Strong Coupling αS(mZ)

Abstract

Energy correlators that describe energy-weighted distances between two or three particles in a hadronic jet are measured using an event sample of root s = 13 TeV proton-proton collisions collected by the CMS experiment and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.3 fb(-1). The measured distributions are consistent with the trends in the simulation that reveal two key features of the strong interaction: confinement and asymptotic freedom. By comparing the ratio of the measured three- and two-particle energy correlator distributions with theoretical calculations that resum collinear emissions at approximate next-to-next-to-leading-logarithmic accuracy matched to a next-to-leading-order calculation, the strong coupling is determined at the Z boson mass: alpha(S)(m(Z)) = 0.1229(-0.0050)(+0.0040), the most precise alpha(S)(m(Z)) value obtained using jet substructure observables.