The measurement of jet production in \(e^\pm p\) scattering at HERA is an important input for the understanding of QCD and a well established tool to test perturbative QCD predictions. Jet cross sections can be used to precisely determine the strong coupling constant and its correlation to the gluon distribution function of the proton.
A new measurement of inclusive jet cross sections in neutral current deep inelastic scattering using the ZEUS detector at the HERA collider is obtained. The data were taken at HERA 2 at a center of mass energy of \(318\,\text{GeV}\) and correspond to an integrated luminosity of \(347\,\text{pb}^{-1}\). Massless jets, reconstructed using the \(k_\perp\)-algorithm in the Breit reference frame, are measured as a function of the squared momentum transfer \(Q^2\) and the transverse momentum of the jets in the Breit frame \(p_{\perp,\text{Breit}}\).
The measured jet cross sections are compared to previous measurements as well as NNLO QCD theory predictions. The measurement is used in a QCD analysis at NNLO accuracy to perform a simultaneous determination of parton distribution functions of the proton and the strong coupling constant, resulting in a value of \(\alpha_\text{s}(M_\text{Z}^2) = 0.1138 \pm 0.0014 \text{ (exp/fit) } {}^{+0.0004}_{-0.0008} \text{ (model/param.) } {}^{+0.0008}_{-0.0007} \text{ (scale)}\). A significantly improved accuracy is observed compared to similar measurements of the strong coupling constant.