Measurement of dijet production with a veto on additional central jet activity in pp collisions at $$ \sqrt {s} = 7 $$ TeV using the ATLAS detector

A measurement of jet activity in the rapidity interval bounded by a dijet system is presented. Events are vetoed if a jet with transverse momentum greater than 20 GeV is found between the two boundary jets. The fraction of dijet events that survive the jet veto is presented for boundary jets that are separated by up to six units of rapidity and with mean transverse momentum 50 < $$ {\bar{p}_{\text{T}}} $$ < 500 GeV. The mean multiplicity of jets above the veto scale in the rapidity interval bounded by the dijet system is also presented as an alternative method for quantifying perturbative QCD emission. The data are compared to a next-to-leading order plus parton shower prediction from the powheg-box, an all-order resummation using the hej calculation and the pythia, herwig++ and alpgen event generators. The measurement was performed using pp collisions at $$ \sqrt {s} = 7 $$ TeV using data recorded by the ATLAS detector in 2010.