Speaker
Description
Recent studies of inclusive Higgs-boson production at N$^3$LO have highlighted that high-energy QCD effects can induce corrections at the 10% level, motivating their careful assessment also in precision electroweak processes at the LHC. In this contribution we present new predictions for $Z/\gamma^*$ plus jet production, focusing on rapidity, transverse-momentum, and angular observables that play a central role in Standard Model measurements and background control. Our calculation combines NLO fixed-order accuracy with next-to-leading energy-logarithmic resummation (NLL/NLO), and is implemented through a novel matching between JETHAD and POWHEG, allowing for a fully realistic description of lepton-level kinematics, polarization effects, and angular correlations. This framework provides, to our knowledge, the first high-energy-resummed predictions for $Z$-boson final states consistently matched to a state-of-the-art event generator. The resulting description improves the theoretical control of key electroweak observables relevant for ongoing LHC analyses and is particularly timely for the High-Luminosity LHC, where percent-level precision on Drell–Yan distributions is a primary target.