Precision physics with pile-up insensitive observables

To deepen the search for beyond the Standard Model physics, the Large Hadron Collider is pushing to higher and higher luminosity. At high luminosity, precision physics becomes increasingly difficult due to contamination from additional proton collisions per bunch crossing called pile-up. In recent years, many methods have been developed to cull this excess mostly low-energy radiation away from important signal regions, but it has been unclear if these methods were amenable to systematically-improvable theoretical understanding. In this paper, it is shown that one such method, soft drop jet grooming, has excellent theoretical properties: it is ultra-local, depending on only radiation within a jet, and it is free of non-global logarithms. Calculations of the soft drop jet mass and related observables are presented at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy matched to next-to-next-to-leading fixed-order in perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics. Once measured at the Large Hadron Collider, precision comparisons between theory and data can be made, essentially independent of the amount of pile-up contamination.