CALCULATION OF Z-PLUS-4 JET PRODUCTION AT THE TEVATRON

We present the first calculation of Z + 4 jet production with heavy qu ark flavor identification at the Tevatron <p(p)over bar> collider. The Z + 4 jet channel is especially interesting as a normalizer for the W + 4 jet background to top quark signals, as a background to a possibl e t --> cZ flavor-changing neutral-current (FCNC) decay signal, and as a background to missing-p(tau) signals from gluino pairs. We also cal culate the contributions to W + 4 jet production from all the differen t heavy-flavor final states. The MADGRAPH program is used to generate all leading order subprocess helicity amplitudes. We present Monte Car lo results with separation and acceptance criteria suitable for the Te vatron experimental analyses. The dependence of the cross sections on experimental cuts and the theoretical ambiguities due to the scale dep endence are discussed. The predicted (W + 4 jet)/(Z + 4 jet) ratio is insensitive to most of these choices.