Abstract
Inclusive four-jet events produced in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt{s} = 7 TeV are analysed for the presence of hard double-parton scattering using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 37.3 pb^-1, collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The contribution of hard double-parton scattering to the production of four-jet events is extracted using an artificial neural network, assuming that hard double-parton scattering can be approximated by an uncorrelated overlaying of dijet events. For events containing at least four jets with transverse momentum p_T > 20 GeV and pseudorapidity eta < 4.4, and at least one having p_T > 42.5 GeV, the contribution of hard double-parton scattering is estimated to be f_{DPS} = 0.092 ^{+0.005}_{-0.011} (stat.) ^{+0.033}_{-0.037} (syst.). After combining this measurement with those of the inclusive dijet and four-jet cross-sections in the appropriate phase space regions, the effective overlap area between the interacting protons, sigma_{eff}, was determined to be sigma_{eff} = 14.9 ^{+1.2}_{-1.0} (stat.) ^{+5.1}_{-3.8} (syst.) mb. This result is consistent within the quoted uncertainties with previous measurements of sigma_{eff}, performed at centre-of-mass energies between 63 GeV and 8 TeV using various final states, and it corresponds to 21^{+7}_{-6}% of the total inelastic cross-section measured at sqrt{s} = 7 TeV. The distributions of the observables sensitive to the contribution of hard double-parton scattering, corrected for detector effects, are also provided.
