Production of gauge bosons plus jets in hadronic collisions ∗ †

Multijet final states are characteristic of a large class of important phenomena present in highenergy hadronic collisions. QCD interactions generate multijet final states via radiative processes at high orders of perturbation theory (pure QCD processes). Heavy particles in the Standard Model (SM), such as W and Z bosons or the top quark, t, decay to multiquark configurations (eventually leading to jets) via electroweak (EW) interactions (mixed EW-QCD processes). In addition to the above SM sources, particles possibly present in theories beyond the SM are expected to decay to multiparton final states, and therefore to lead to multijets. Typical examples are the cascade decays to quarks and gluons of supersymmetric strongly interacting particles, such as squarks and gluinos (SUSY-QCD processes). In addition to fully hadronic multijet final states, a special interest exists in final states where the jets are accompanied by gauge bosons. For example