Inclusive jet cross sections in the Breit frame in neutral current deep inelastic scattering at HERA and determination of alpha s

Abstract Inclusive jet differential cross sections have been measured in neutral current deep inelastic e + p scattering for boson virtualities Q 2 >125 GeV 2 . The data were taken using the ZEUS detector at HERA and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 38.6 pb −1 . Jets were identified in the Breit frame using the longitudinally invariant k T cluster algorithm. Measurements of differential inclusive jet cross sections are presented as functions of jet transverse energy ( E B T ,jet ), jet pseudorapidity and Q 2 , for jets with E B T ,jet >8 GeV. Next-to-leading-order QCD calculations agree well with the measurements both at high Q 2 and high E B T ,jet . The value of α s ( M Z ), determined from an analysis of dσ / dQ 2 for Q 2 >500 GeV 2 , is α s ( M Z )=0.1212±0.0017(stat.) +0.0023 −0.0031 (syst.) +0.0028 −0.0027 (th.).