Transverse energy-energy correlations in next-to-leading order in<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:msub><mml:mi>α</mml:mi><mml:mi>s</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:math>at the LHC

We compute the transverse energy-energy correlation (EEC) and its asymmetry (AEEC) in next-to-leading order in ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{s}$ in proton-proton collisions at the LHC with the center-of-mass energy ${E}_{\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{m}.}=7\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{TeV}$. We show that the transverse EEC and the AEEC distributions are insensitive to the QCD factorization and the renormalization scales, structure functions of the proton, and for a judicious choice of the jet size, also the underlying minimum bias events. Hence they can be used to precisely test QCD in hadron colliders and determine the strong coupling ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{s}$. We illustrate these features by defining the hadron jets using the anti-${k}_{T}$ jet algorithm and an event selection procedure employed in the analysis of jets at the LHC and show the ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{s}({M}_{Z})$ dependence of the transverse EEC and the AEEC in the anticipated range $0.11\ensuremath{\le}{\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{s}({M}_{Z})\ensuremath{\le}0.13$.