Search

Streams of event weights in particle-level Monte Carlo event generators are a convenient and immensely CPU-efficient approach to express systematic uncertainties in phenomenology calculations, providing systematic variations on the nominal prediction within a single event sample. But the lack of a common standard for labelling these variation streams across different tools has proven to be a major limitation for event-processing tools and analysers alike. Here we propose a well-defined, extensible community standard for the naming, ordering, and interpretation of weight streams that will serve as the basis for semantically correct parsing and combination of such variations in both theoretical and experimental studies., 11 pages

Electron Ion Collider (EIC) is a particle accelerator facility planned for construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York by the United States Department of Energy. EIC will provide capabilities of colliding beams of polarized electrons with polarized beams of proton and light ions. EIC will be one of the largest and most sophisticated new accelerator facilities worldwide, and the only new large-scale accelerator facility planned for construction in the United States in the next few decades. The versatility, resolving power and intensity of EIC will present many new opportunities to address some of the crucial and fundamental open scientific questions in particle physics. This document provides an overview of the science case of EIC from the perspective of the high energy physics community., Submitted to the Proceedings of the US Community Study on the Future of Particle Physics (Snowmass 2021)

Discriminating between quark- and gluon-initiated jets has long been a central focus of jet substructure, leading to the introduction of numerous observables and calculations to high perturbative accuracy. At the same time, there have been many attempts to fully exploit the jet radiation pattern using tools from statistics and machine learning. We propose a new approach that combines a deep analytic understanding of jet substructure with the optimality promised by machine learning and statistics. After specifying an approximation to the full emission phase space, we show how to construct the optimal observable for a given classification task. This procedure is demonstrated for the case of quark and gluons jets, where we show how to systematically capture sub-eikonal corrections in the splitting functions, and prove that linear combinations of weighted multiplicity is the optimal observable. In addition to providing a new and powerful framework for systematically improving jet substructure observables, we demonstrate the performance of several quark versus gluon jet tagging observables in parton-level Monte Carlo simulations, and find that they perform at or near the level of a deep neural network classifier. Combined with the rapid recent progress in the development of higher order parton showers, we believe that our approach provides a basis for systematically exploiting subleading effects in jet substructure analyses at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and beyond., 25 pages, 6 figures

High-quality simulated data is crucial for particle physics discoveries. Therefore, parton shower algorithms are a major building block of the data synthesis in event generator programs. However, the core algorithms used to generate parton showers have barely changed since the 1980s. With quantum computers' rapid and continuous development, dedicated algorithms are required to exploit the potential that quantum computers provide to address problems in high-energy physics. This paper presents a novel approach to synthesising parton showers using the Discrete QCD method. The algorithm benefits from an elegant quantum walk implementation which can be embedded into the classical toolchain. We use the ibm_algiers device to sample parton shower configurations and generate data that we compare against measurements taken at the ALEPH, DELPHI and OPAL experiments. This is the first time a Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) device has been used to simulate realistic high-energy particle collision events., Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures. Updated to peer-reviewed published version

We introduce a method for the separation of soft and collinear logarithms in QCD parton evolution at $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s^2)$ and at leading color. Using an implementation of the technique in the Dire parton shower, we analyze the numerical impact of genuine triple-collinear corrections from quark pair emission in $e^+e^-\to$ hadrons., Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure

The European physical journal / C 82(8), 755 (2022). doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-022-10715-0, Azimuthal correlations in $\mathrm {Z} +$jet production at large transverse momenta are computed by matching Parton-Branching (PB) TMD parton distributions and showers with NLO calculations via MCatNLO. The predictions are compared with those for dijet production in the same kinematic range. The azimuthal correlations $\Delta \phi $ between the Z boson and the leading jet are steeper compared to those in dijet production at transverse momenta $\mathcal{O}(100)$ GeV , while they become similar for very high transverse momenta ${{\mathcal {O}}}(1000)$ GeV . The different patterns of $\mathrm {Z} +$jet and dijet azimuthal correlations can be used to search for potential factorization-breaking effects in the back-to-back region, which depend on the different color and spin structure of the final states and their interferences with the initial states. In order to investigate these effects experimentally, we propose to measure the ratio of the distributions in $\Delta \phi $ for $\mathrm {Z} +$jet- and multijet production at low and at high transverse momenta, and compare the results to predictions obtained assuming factorization. We examine the role of theoretical uncertainties by performing variations of the factorization scale, renormalization scale and matching scale. In particular, we present a comparative study of matching scale uncertainties in the cases of PB-TMD and collinear parton showers., Published by Springer, Heidelberg

The European physical journal / C 82(1), 36 (2022). doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-022-09997-1, The azimuthal correlation, $\Delta \phi$ , of high transverse momentum jets in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ \TeV\ is studied by applying PB -TMD distributions to NLO calculations via MCatNLO together with the PB -TMD parton shower. A very good description of the cross section as a function of $\Delta \phi$ is observed. In the back-to-back region of $\Delta \phi \to \pi$ a very good agreement is observed with the PB -TMD Set 2 distributions while significant deviations are obtained with the PB -TMD Set 1 distributions. Set 1 uses the evolution scale while Set 2 uses transverse momentum as an argument in \alphas, and the above observation therefore confirms the importance of angular ordering in the parton evolution.The total uncertainties of the predictions are dominated by the scale uncertainties of the matrix element, while the uncertainties coming from the PB-TMDs and the corresponding PB-TMD shower are very small., Published by Springer, Heidelberg

We develop EventMover, a differentiable parton shower event generator. This tool generates high- and variable-length scattering events that can be moved with simulation derivatives to change the value of the scale $\Lambda_\mathrm{QCD}$ defining the strong coupling constant, without introducing statistical variations between samples. To demonstrate the potential for EventMover, we compare the output of the simulation with $e^+e^-$ data to show how one could fit $\Lambda_\mathrm{QCD}$ with only a single event sample. This is a critical step towards a fully differentiable event generator for particle and nuclear physics., Comment: Implementation available at https://gitlab.com/discreteqcd/eventmover

We discuss our recent results on azimuthal distributions in vector boson + jets and multi-jet production at the LHC, obtained from the matching of next-to-leading order (NLO) perturbative matrix elements with transverse momentum dependent (TMD) parton branching. We present a comparative analysis of boson-jet and jet-jet correlations in the back to-back region, and a study of the theoretical systematic uncertainties associated with the matching scale in the cases of TMD and collinear parton showers., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, contribution to proceedings of ICHEP 2022

International audience; Detailed and precise background predictions are the backbone of large parts of high-energy collider phenomenology. This requires to embed precision QCD calculations into detailed event generators, to produce comprehensive software simulations. Only continued progress in this direction will allow us to exploit the full potential of measurements at the Large Hadron Collider, or at a future Electron-Ion Collider. This work presents a method to combine third-order QCD calculations for hadronic scattering processes with Monte-Carlo event generators, thus enabling a new generation of precision predictions.

This manual describes the PYTHIA 8.3 event generator, the most recent version of an evolving physics tool used to answer fundamental questions in particle physics. The program is most often used to generate high-energy-physics collision "events", i.e. sets of particles produced in association with the collision of two incoming high-energy particles, but has several uses beyond that. The guiding philosophy is to produce and reproduce properties of experimentally obtained collisions as accurately as possible. The program includes a wide ranges of reactions within and beyond the Standard Model, and extending to heavy ion physics. Emphasis is put on phenomena where strong interactions play a major role. The manual contains both pedagogical and practical components. All included physics models are described in enough detail to allow the user to obtain a cursory overview of used assumptions and approximations, enabling an informed evaluation of the program output. A number of the most central algorithms are described in enough detail that the main results of the program can be reproduced independently, allowing further development of existing models or the addition of new ones. Finally, a chapter dedicated fully to the user is included towards the end, providing pedagogical examples of standard use cases, and a detailed description of a number of external interfaces. The program code, the online manual, and the latest version of this print manual can be found on the PYTHIA web page: https://www.pythia.org/, Comment: 315 pages, 19 figures. The program code is available at https://www.pythia.org/

The European physical journal / C 81(8), 752 (1-10) (2021). doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-09508-8, A common library, TMDlib2, for Transverse-Momentum-Dependent distributions (TMDs) and unintegrated parton distributions (uPDFs) is described, which allows for easy access of commonly used TMDs and uPDFs, providing a three-dimensional (3D) picture of the partonic structure of hadrons. The tool TMDplotter allows for web-based plotting of distributions implemented in TMDlib2, together with collinear pdfs as available in LHAPDF., Published by Springer, Heidelberg

The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments, was a success achieved with only a percent of the entire dataset foreseen for the LHC. It opened a landscape of possibilities in the study of Higgs boson properties, Electroweak Symmetry breaking and the Standard Model in general, as well as new avenues in probing new physics beyond the Standard Model. Six years after the discovery, with a conspicuously larger dataset collected during LHC Run 2 at a 13 TeV centre-of-mass energy, the theory and experimental particle physics communities have started a meticulous exploration of the potential for precision measurements of its properties. This includes studies of Higgs boson production and decays processes, the search for rare decays and production modes, high energy observables, and searches for an extended electroweak symmetry breaking sector. This report summarises the potential reach and opportunities in Higgs physics during the High Luminosity phase of the LHC, with an expected dataset of pp collisions at 14 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3 ab$^{-1}$. These studies are performed in light of the most recent analyses from LHC collaborations and the latest theoretical developments. The potential of an LHC upgrade, colliding protons at a centre-of-mass energy of 27 TeV and producing a dataset corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 15 ab$^{-1}$, is also discussed., Report from Working Group 2 on the Physics of the HL-LHC, and Perspectives at the HE-LHC, 364 pages

The search for new interactions and particles in high-energy collider physics relies on precise background predictions. This has led to many advances in combining precise fixed-order cross-section calculations with detailed event generator simulations. In recent years, fixed-order QCD calculations of inclusive cross sections at N3LO precision have emerged, followed by an impressive progress at producing differential results. Once differential results become publicly available, it would be prudent to embed these into event generators to allow the community to leverage these advances. This note offers some concrete thoughts on ME+PS matching at third order in QCD. As a method for testing these thoughts, a toy calculation of $e^+e^-\rightarrow u \bar u$ at $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s^3)$ is constructed, and combined with an event generator through unitary matching. The toy implementation may serve also as blueprint for high-precision QCD predictions at future lepton colliders. As a byproduct of the N3LO matching formula, a new NNLO+PS formula for processes with "additional" jets is obtained., Comment: 19 pages main text + detailed appendices

We present a new way of performing hypothesis tests on scattering data, by means of a perturbatively calculable classifier. This classifier exploits the “history tree” of how the measured data point might have evolved out of any simpler (reconstructed) points along classical paths, while explicitly keeping quantum–mechanical interference effects by copiously employing complete leading-order matrix elements. This approach extends the standard Matrix Element Method to an arbitrary number of final state objects and to exclusive final states where reconstructed objects can be collinear or soft. We have implemented this method into the standalone package hytrees and have applied it to Higgs boson production in association with two jets, with subsequent decay into photons. hytrees allows to construct an optimal classifier to discriminate this process from large Standard Model backgrounds. It further allows to find the most sensitive kinematic regions that contribute to the classification.

This work received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme as part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network MCnetITN3 (grant agreement no. 722104)., Valassi, A., Yazgan, E., McFayden, J., Amoroso, S., Bendavid, J., Buckley, A., Cacciari, M., Childers, T., Ciulli, V., Frederix, R., Frixione, S., Giuli, F., Grohsjean, A., Gütschow, C., Höche, S., Hopkins, W., Ilten, P., Konstantinov, D., Krauss, F., Li, Q., Lönnblad, L., Maltoni, F., Mangano, M., Marshall, Z., Mattelaer, O., Fernandez Menendez, J., Mrenna, S., Muralidharan, S., Neumann, T., Plätzer, S., Prestel, S., Roiser, S., Schönherr, M., Schulz, H., Schulz, M., Sexton-Kennedy, E., Siegert, F., Siódmok, A., Stewart, G.A., The HSF Physics Event Generator WG

Parton showers are crucial components of high-energy physics calculations. Improving their modelling of QCD is an active research area since shower approximations are stumbling blocks for precision event generators. Naively, the interference between sub-dominant Standard-Model interactions and QCD can be of similar size to subleading QCD corrections. This article assesses the impact of QCD/QED interference effects in parton showers, by developing a sophisticated shower including QED, QCD at fixed color, and employing complete tree-level matrix element corrections for individual $N_C=3$ color configurations to embed interference. The resulting simulation indicates that QCD/QED interference effects are small for a simple test case and dwarfed by electro-weak resonance effects., Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, version accepted for publication in SciPostPhys

Models where dark matter is a part of an electroweak multiplet feature charged particles with macroscopic lifetimes due to the charged-neutral mass split of the order of pion mass. At the Large Hadron Collider, the ATLAS and CMS experiments will identify these charged particles as disappearing tracks, since they decay into a massive invisible dark matter candidate and a very soft charged Standard-Model particle which fails to pass the reconstruction requirements. While ATLAS and CMS have focused on the supersymmetric versions of these scenarios, we have performed here the reinterpretation of the latest ATLAS disappearing track search for a suite of dark matter multiplets with different spins and electroweak quantum numbers. More concretely, we consider the cases of the inert Two Higgs Doublet model (i2HDM), of Minimal Fermion Dark Matter (MFDM) and of Vector Triplet Dark Matter (VTDM). Our procedure is validated by using the same wino and higgsino benchmark models employed by the ATLAS collaboration. We have found that with the disappearing track signature one can probe a vast portion of the parameter space, well beyond the reach of prompt missing energy searches (notably mono-jets). We provide tables with the upper-limits on the cross-section upper limits, and efficiencies in the lifetime - dark matter mass plane for all the models under consideration. Moreover we make the recasting code employed here publicly available, as part of the LLP Recasting Repository., 34 pages, 8 figures, 10 tables

We show how a careful analysis of the behaviour of a parton shower Monte Carlo in the vicinity of the soft and collinear regions allows one to formulate a modified MC@NLO-matching prescription that reduces the number of negative-weight events with respect to that stemming from the standard MC@NLO procedure. As a first practical application of such a prescription, that we dub MC@NLO-$\Delta$, we have implemented it in the MadGraph5_aMC@NLO framework, by employing the Pythia8 Monte Carlo. We present selected MC@NLO-$\Delta$ results at the 13 TeV LHC, and compare them with MC@NLO ones. We find that the former predictions are consistent with the latter ones within the typical matching systematics, and that the reduction of negative-weight events is significant., Comment: 44 pages, 13 figures; several minor text amendments and one figure added

1-220 (2020)., This Report summarizes the proceedings of the 2019 Les Houches workshop on Physics at TeV Colliders. Session 1 dealt with (I) new developments for high precision Standard Model calculations, (II) the sensitivity of parton distribution functions to the experimental inputs, (III) new developments in jet substructure techniques and a detailed examination of gluon fragmentation at the LHC, (IV) issues in the theoretical description of the production of Standard Model Higgs bosons and how to relate experimental measurements, and (V) Monte Carlo event generator studies relating to PDF evolution and comparisons of important processes at the LHC.

Precision background predictions with well-defined uncertainty estimates are important for interpreting collider-physics measurements and for planning future high-energy collider experiments. It is especially important to estimate the perturbative uncertainties in predictions of inclusive measurements of jet observables, that are designed to be largely insensitive to non-perturbative effects such as the structure of beam-remnants, multi-parton scattering or hadronization. In this study, we discuss possible pit-falls in defining the perturbative uncertainty of unitarized next-to-leading order multi-jet merged predictions, using the PYTHIA event generator as our vehicle. For this purpose, we consider different choices of unitarized NLO merging schemes as well as consistent variations of renormalization scales in different parts of the calculation. Such a combined discussion allows to rank the contribution of scale variations to the error budget in comparison to other contributions due to algorithmic choices that are often assumed fixed. The scale uncertainty bands of different merging schemes largely overlap, but differences between the "central" predictions in different schemes can remain comparable to scale uncertainties even for very well-separated jets, or be larger than scale uncertainties in transition regions between calculations of different jet multiplicity. The availability of these variations within PYTHIA will enable more systematic studies of perturbative uncertainties in precision background calculations in the future., 15 pages, 4 figures with example results

We present a novel event generation framework for the efficient simulation of vector boson plus multi-jet backgrounds at the high-luminosity LHC and at possible future hadron colliders. MPI parallelization of parton-level and particle-level event generation and storage of parton-level event information using the HDF5 data format allow us to obtain leading-order merged Monte-Carlo predictions with up to nine jets in the final state. The parton-level event samples generated in this manner correspond to an integrated luminosity of 3ab-1 and are made publicly available for future phenomenological studies., 10 pages, 8 figures, 5 tables

Parton shower algorithms are key components of theoretical predictions for high-energy collider physics. Work towards more accurate parton shower algorithms is thus pursued along many different avenues. The systematic treatment of subleading color corrections in parton shower algorithms is however technically challenging and remains elusive. In this article, we present an efficient and numerically stable algorithm to sample color configurations at fixed $N_C=3$, using the correct color factor including subleading corrections with a parton shower. The algorithm is implemented as stand-alone program that can be interfaced to the PYTHIA event generator. Preliminary comparisons to to LEP data are presented., Comment: 13 pages, 7 color figures, updated to version submitted to journal, disentangled some otherwise confusing referencing

We compute the next-to-leading order corrections to soft-gluon radiation differentially in the one-emission phase space. We show that their contribution to the evolution of color dipoles can be obtained in a modified subtraction scheme, such that both one- and two-emission terms are amenable to Monte-Carlo integration. The two-loop cusp anomalous dimension is recovered naturally upon integration over the full phase space. We present two independent implementations of the new algorithm in the two event generators Pythia and Sherpa, and we compare the resulting fully differential simulation to the CMW scheme., 22 pages, 8 figures

The PYTHIA program is a standard tool for the generation of events in high-energy collisions, comprising a coherent set of physics models for the evolution from a few-body hard process to a complex multiparticle final state. It contains a library of hard processes, models for initial- and final-state parton showers, matching and merging methods between hard processes and parton showers, multiparton interactions, beam remnants, string fragmentation and particle decays. It also has a set of utilities and several interfaces to external programs. PYTHIA 8.2 is the second main release after the complete rewrite from Fortran to C++, and now has reached such a maturity that it offers a complete replacement for most applications, notably for LHC physics studies. The many new features should allow an improved description of data., 45 pages

We present a parton shower which implements the DGLAP evolution of parton densities and fragmentation functions at next-to-leading order precision up to effects stemming from local four-momentum conservation. The Monte-Carlo simulation is based on including next-to-leading order collinear splitting functions in an existing parton shower and combining their soft enhanced contributions with the corresponding terms at leading order. Soft double counting is avoided by matching to the soft eikonal. Example results from two independent realizations of the algorithm, implemented in the two event generation frameworks Pythia and Sherpa, illustrate the improved precision of the new formalism., 11 pages, 4 figures

We present a parameter-free scheme to combine fixed-order multi-jet results with parton-shower evolution. The scheme produces jet cross sections with leading-order accuracy in the complete phase space of multiple emissions, resumming large logarithms when appropriate, while not arbitrarily enforcing ordering on momentum configurations beyond the reach of the parton-shower evolution equation. This requires the development of a matrix-element correction scheme for complex phase-spaces including ordering conditions as well as a systematic scale-setting procedure for unordered phase-space points. The resulting algorithm does not require a merging-scale parameter. We implement the new method in the Vincia framework and compare to LHC data., updated to version published in EPJC

A framework to include triple collinear splitting functions into parton showers is presented, and the implementation of flavor-changing NLO splitting kernels is discussed as a first application. The correspondence between the Monte-Carlo integration and the analytic computation of NLO DGLAP evolution kernels is made explicit for both timelike and spacelike parton evolution. Numerical simulation results are obtained with two independent implementations of the new algorithm, using the two independent event generation frameworks Pythia and Sherpa., 21 pages, 6 figures

We summarise the main features of VINCIA's antenna-based treatment of QCD initial- and final-state showers, which includes iterated tree-level matrix-element corrections and automated evaluations of perturbative shower uncertainties. The latter are computed on the fly and are cast as a set of alternative weights for each generated event. The resulting algorithm has been made publicly available as a plug-in to the PYTHIA 8 event generator., 6 pages. Presented at ICHEP 2016, Chicago

We consider the production of a single $Z$ or $W$ boson in association with jets at the LHC. We compute the corresponding cross sections by matching NLO QCD predictions with the Herwig++ and Pythia8 parton showers, and by merging all of the underlying matrix elements with up to two light partons at the Born level. We compare our results with several 7-TeV measurements by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, and overall we find a good agreement between theory and data., 43 pages, 47 figures. In v2 the two plots of fig. 26 have been updated, and the text modified accordingly, following a fix in the relevant Rivet analysis. Minor changes in the acknowledgments and affiliations. Clarifications and one reference added in v3

This report was prepared in the context of the LPCC "Electroweak Precision Measurements at the LHC WG" and summarizes the activity of a subgroup dedicated to the systematic comparison of public Monte Carlo codes, which describe the Drell-Yan processes at hadron colliders, in particular at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This work represents an important step towards the definition of an accurate simulation framework necessary for very high-precision measurements of electroweak (EW) observables such as the $W$ boson mass and the weak mixing angle. All the codes considered in this report share at least next-to-leading-order (NLO) accuracy in the prediction of the total cross sections in an expansion either in the strong or in the EW coupling constant. The NLO fixed-order predictions have been scrutinized at the technical level, using exactly the same inputs, setup and perturbative accuracy, in order to quantify the level of agreement of different implementations of the same calculation. A dedicated comparison, again at the technical level, of three codes that reach next-to-next-to-leading-order (NNLO) accuracy in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) for the total cross section has also been performed. These fixed-order results are a well-defined reference that allows a classification of the impact of higher-order sets of radiative corrections. Several examples of higher-order effects due to the strong or the EW interaction are discussed in this common framework. Also the combination of QCD and EW corrections is discussed, together with the ambiguities that affect the final result, due to the choice of a specific combination recipe., 92 pages, report of the working group on precision calculations for Drell-Yan processes

We present a new parton-shower algorithm. Borrowing from the basic ideas of dipole cascades, the evolution variable is judiciously chosen as the transverse momentum in the soft limit. This leads to a very simple analytic structure of the evolution. A weighting algorithm is implemented, that allows to consistently treat potentially negative values of the splitting functions and the parton distributions. We provide two independent, publicly available implementations for the two event generators Pythia and Sherpa., 23 pages, 9 figures

In this talk, we discuss recent developments in combining parton showers and fixed-order calculations. We focus on the UNNLOPS method for matching next-to-next-to-leading order computations to the parton shower, and we present results from Sherpa for Drell-Yan lepton-pair and Higgs-boson production at the LHC., 4 pages, 2 figures, proceedings for Moriond QCD 2015

We present a simple approach to combine NNLO QCD calculations and parton showers, based on the UNLOPS technique. We apply the method to the computation of Drell-Yan lepton-pair production at the Large Hadron Collider. We comment on possible improvements and intrinsic uncertainties., 9 pages, 1 table, 3 figures

VBFNLO is a fully flexible parton level Monte Carlo program for the simulation of vector boson fusion, double and triple vector boson production in hadronic collisions at next-to-leading order in the strong Coupling constant. VBFNLO includes Higgs and vector boson decays with full spin correlations and all off-shell effects. In addition, VBFNLO implements CP-even and CP-odd Higgs boson via gluon fusion, associated with two jets, at the leading-order one-loop level with the full top- and bottom-quark mass dependence in a generic two-Higgs-doublet model. A variety of effects arising from beyond the Standard Model physics are implemented for selected processes. This includes anomalous couplings of Higgs and vector bosons and a Warped Higgsless extra dimension model. The program offers the possibility to generate Les Houches Accord event files for all processes available at leading order. Program summary Program title: VBFNLO Catalogue identifier: AEDO_v1_0 Program summary URL: http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AEDO_v1_0.html Program obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen's University, Belfast, N. Ireland Licensing provisions: GPL version 2 No. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 339218 No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 2620847 Distribution format: tar.gz Programming language: Fortran, parts in C++ Computer: All Operating system: Linux, should also work on other systems Classification: 11.1, 11.2 External routines: Optionally Les Houches Accord PDF Interface library and the GNU Scientific library Nature of problem: To resolve the large scale dependence inherent in leading order calculations and to quantify the cross section error induced by uncertainties in the determination of parton distribution functions, it is necessary to include NLO corrections. Moreover, whenever stringent cuts are required on decay products and/or identified jets the question arises whether the scale dependence and a k-factor, defined as the ratio of NLO to LO cross section, determined for the inclusive production cross sections are valid for the search region one is interested in. Solution method: The problem is best addressed by implementing the one-loop QCD corrections in a fully flexible NLO parton-level Monte Carlo program, where arbitrary cuts can be specified as well as various scale choices. In addition, any currently available parton distribution function set can be used through the LHAPDF library. Running time: Depending on the process studied. Usually from minutes to hours, The research presented in this article was supported in part by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft via the Sonderforschungsbereich/Transregio SFB/TR-9 “Computational Particle Physics” and the Graduiertenkolleg “High Energy Physics and Particle Astrophysics”, and in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. PHY05-51164. F. Campanario acknowledges a postdoctoral fellowship of the Generalitat Valenciana (Beca Postdoctoral d‘Excelléncia) and S. Plätzer support from the Landesgraduiertenförderung Baden-Württemberg. M. Worek was funded in part by the RTN European Programme MRTN-CT-2006-035505 HEPTOOLS – Tools and Precision Calculations for Physics Discoveries at Colliders and B. Jäger by the Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association, contract HA-101 (“Physics at the Terascale”).

We discuss how the UN2LOPS scheme for matching NNLO calculations to parton showers can be applied to processes with large higher-order perturbative QCD corrections. We focus on Higgs-boson production through gluon fusion as an example. We also present an NNLO fixed-order event generator for this reaction., 9 pages, 3 figures, 1 table

This Report summarizes the proceedings of the 2013 Les Houches workshop on Physics at TeV Colliders. Session 1 dealt primarily with (1) the techniques for calculating standard model multi-leg NLO and NNLO QCD and NLO EW cross sections and (2) the comparison of those cross sections with LHC data from Run 1, and projections for future measurements in Run 2., Proceedings of the Standard Model Working Group of the 2013 Les Houches Workshop, Physics at TeV Colliders, Les houches 3-21 June 2013. 200 pages

The mcplots.cern.ch web site (MCPLOTS) provides a simple online repository of plots made with high-energy-physics event generators, comparing them to a wide variety of experimental data. The repository is based on the HEPDATA online database of experimental results and on the RIVET Monte Carlo analysis tool. The repository is continually updated and relies on computing power donated by volunteers, via the LHC@HOME platform., Comment: 30 pages

We discuss extensions the CKKW-L and UMEPS tree-level matrix element and parton shower merging approaches to next-to-leading order accuracy. The generalisation of CKKW-L is based on the NL3 scheme previously developed for e+e- -annihilation, which is extended to also handle hadronic collisions by a careful treatment of parton densities. NL3 is further augmented to allow for more readily accessible NLO input. To allow for a more careful handling of merging scale dependencies we introduce an extension of the UMEPS method. This approach, dubbed UNLOPS, does not inherit problematic features of CKKW-L, and thus allows for a theoretically more appealing definition of NLO merging. We have implemented both schemes in Pythia8, and present results for the merging of W- and Higgs-production events, where the zero- and one-jet contribution are corrected to next-to-leading order simultaneously, and higher jet multiplicities are described by tree-level matrix elements. The implementation of the procedure is completely general and can be used for higher jet multiplicities and other processes, subject to the availability of programs able to correctly generate the corresponding partonic states to leading and next-to-leading order accuracy., updated references, submitted to JHEP

We revisit the CKKW-L method for merging tree-level matrix elements with parton showers, and amend it with an add/subtract scheme to minimise dependencies on the merging scale. The scheme is constructed to, as far as possible, recover the unitary nature of the underlying parton shower, so that the inclusive cross section is retained for each jet multiplicity separately., Comment: 30 pages, 13 figures, updated references, submitted to JHEP

We present an implementation of the so-called CKKW-L merging scheme for combining multi-jet tree-level matrix elements with parton showers. The implementation uses the transverse-momentum-ordered shower with interleaved multiple interactions as implemented in PYTHIA8. We validate our procedure using e+e--annihilation into jets and vector boson production in hadronic collisions, with special attention to details in the algorithm which are formally sub-leading in character, but may have visible effects in some observables. We find substantial merging scale dependencies induced by the enforced rapidity ordering in the default PYTHIA8 shower. If this rapidity ordering is removed the merging scale dependence is almost negligible. We then also find that the shower does a surprisingly good job of describing the hardness of multi-jet events, as long as the hardest couple of jets are given by the matrix elements. The effects of using interleaved multiple interactions as compared to more simplistic ways of adding underlying-event effects in vector boson production are shown to be negligible except in a few sensitive observables. To illustrate the generality of our implementation, we also give some example results from di-boson production and pure QCD jet production in hadronic collisions., 44 pages, 23 figures, as published in JHEP, including all changes recommended by the referee

This Report summarizes the proceedings of the 2017 Les Houches workshop on Physics at TeV Colliders. Session 1 dealt with (I) new developments relevant for high precision Standard Model calculations, (II) theoretical uncertainties and dataset dependence of parton distribution functions, (III) new developments in jet substructure techniques, (IV) issues in the theoretical description of the production of Standard Model Higgs bosons and how to relate experimental measurements, (V) phenomenological studies essential for comparing LHC data from Run II with theoretical predictions and projections for future measurements, and (VI) new developments in Monte Carlo event generators., Comment: Proceedings of the Standard Model Working Group of the 2017 Les Houches Workshop, Physics at TeV Colliders, Les Houches 5-23 June 2017. 314 pages

We present a consistent way of combining associated weak boson radiation in hard dijet events with hard QCD radiation in Drell-Yan-like scatterings. This integrates multiple tree-level calculations with vastly different cross sections, QCD- and electroweak parton shower resummation into a single framework. The new merging strategy is implemented in the PYTHIA event generator and predictions are confronted with LHC data. Improvements over the previous strategy are observed. Results of the new electroweak-improved merging at a future 100 TeV proton collider are also investigated., 18 pages, 9 figures

7 pp. (2019)., Monte Carlo event generators (MCEGs) are the indispensable workhorses of particle physics, bridging the gap between theoretical ideas and first-principles calculations on the one hand, and the complex detector signatures and data of the experimental community on the other hand. All collider physics experiments are dependent on simulated events by MCEG codes such as Herwig, Pythia, Sherpa, POWHEG, and MG5_aMC@NLO to design and tune their detectors and analysis strategies. The development of MCEGs is overwhelmingly driven by a vibrant community of academics at European Universities, who also train the next generations of particle phenomenologists. The new challenges posed by possible future collider-based experiments and the fact that the first analyses at Run II of the LHC are now frequently limited by theory uncertainties urge the community to invest into further theoretical and technical improvements of these essential tools. In this short contribution to the European Strategy Update, we briefly review the state of the art, and the further developments that will be needed to meet the challenges of the next generation.

We study the hadroproduction of a $Wb$ pair in association with a light jet, focusing on the dominant $t$-channel contribution and including exactly at the matrix-element level all non-resonant and off-shell effects induced by the finite top-quark width. Our simulations are accurate to the next-to-leading order in QCD, and are matched to the HERWIG6 and PYTHIA8 parton showers through the MC@NLO method. We present phenomenological results relevant to the 8 TeV LHC, and carry out a thorough comparison to the case of on-shell $t$-channel single-top production. We formulate our approach so that it can be applied to the general case of matrix elements that feature coloured intermediate resonances and are matched to parton showers., 36 pages, 7 figures

The 2011 Les Houches workshop was the first to confront LHC data. In the two years since the previous workshop there have been significant advances in both soft and hard QCD, particularly in the areas of multi-leg NLO calculations, the inclusion of those NLO calculations into parton shower Monte Carlos, and the tuning of the non-perturbative parameters of those Monte Carlos. These proceedings describe the theoretical advances that have taken place, the impact of the early LHC data, and the areas for future development., Comment: 220 pages

We present the first public implementation of antenna-based QCD initial- and final-state showers. The shower kernels are \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$2\rightarrow 3$$\end{document}2→3 antenna functions, which capture not only the collinear dynamics but also the leading soft (coherent) singularities of QCD matrix elements. We define the evolution measure to be inversely proportional to the leading poles, hence gluon emissions are evolved in a \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$p_\perp $$\end{document}p⊥ measure inversely proportional to the eikonal, while processes that only contain a single pole (e.g., \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$g\rightarrow q\bar{q}$$\end{document}g→qq¯) are evolved in virtuality. Non-ordered emissions are allowed, suppressed by an additional power of \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$1/Q^2$$\end{document}1/Q2. Recoils and kinematics are governed by exact on-shell \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$2\rightarrow 3$$\end{document}2→3 phase-space factorisations. This first implementation is limited to massless QCD partons and colourless resonances. Tree-level matrix-element corrections are included for QCD up to \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal {O}(\alpha _s^4)$$\end{document}O(αs4) (4 jets), and for Drell–Yan and Higgs production up to \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal {O}(\alpha _s^3)$$\end{document}O(αs3) (V / H + 3 jets). The resulting algorithm has been made publicly available in Vincia 2.0.

This Report summarizes the proceedings of the 2015 Les Houches workshop on Physics at TeV Colliders. Session 1 dealt with (I) new developments relevant for high precision Standard Model calculations, (II) the new PDF4LHC parton distributions, (III) issues in the theoretical description of the production of Standard Model Higgs bosons and how to relate experimental measurements, (IV) a host of phenomenological studies essential for comparing LHC data from Run I with theoretical predictions and projections for future measurements in Run II, and (V) new developments in Monte Carlo event generators., Proceedings of the Standard Model Working Group of the 2015 Les Houches Workshop, Physics at TeV Colliders, Les Houches 1-19 June 2015. 227 pages