Measurements of the differential cross sections for the production of exactly four jets in proton-proton collisions are presented as a function of the transverse momentum $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ and pseudorapidity $\eta$, together with the correlations in azimuthal angle and the $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ balance among the jets. The data sample was collected in 2010 at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC, with an integrated luminosity of $36{\mathrm{pb}}^{-1}$. The cross section for exactly four jets, with two hard jets of $p_{\mathrm{T}}>50\mathrm{GeV}$ each, together with two jets of $p_{\mathrm{T}}>20\mathrm{GeV}$ each, within $|\eta |<4.7$ is measured to be $\sigma =330\pm 5\text{(stat.)}\pm 45(\text{syst.})\mathrm{nb}$. It is found that fixed-order matrix element calculations including parton showers describe the measured differential cross sections in some regions of phase space only, and that adding contributions from double parton scattering brings the Monte Carlo predictions closer to the data.

• Received 22 December 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.89.092010

This article is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

© 2014 CERN, for the CMS Collaboration