Search

Subtle field-theoretical effects suggest the presence of additional Higgs contributions in standard model processes. This has been supported by electroweak lattice calculation, e.\ g.\ for vector boson scattering. These effects can be included in perturbation theory by a suitable augmentation. We use such augmented perturbation theory to determine the impact at next-to-leading order at lepton colliders, from LEP to future machines such as FCC, in collisions with fermion-antifermion final states. After providing the formal background, we outline the calculational procedure, showing that in the fully exclusive process $e^-e^+\to f\bar{f}$ deviations only occur in fixed order at electroweak NNLO, but become relevant at the TeV scale already in resummed tree-level calculations. We discuss further processes where deviations are expected already at fixed-order NLO., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, submitted to the proceedings of ICHEP24

We present a novel simulation of a strongly interacting dark sector also known as the Hidden Valley scenarios using angular ordered showers and the cluster hadronisation model in Herwig 7. We discuss the basics of this implementation and the scale hierarchies underpinning the simulation. With the help of a few benchmarks, we show the effect of variation of dark sector parameters on thrust and angularities within the dark sector, and study correlation functions, which can be helpful for understanding the angular structure of these events. Finally we comment on the uncertainties introduced due to lack of knowledge of hadronisation parameters within the dark sectors., Comment: 12 pages, 16 figures

We present a comparison of three different general-purpose Monte Carlo event generators, Herwig, Pythia, and Sherpa, with respect to the simulation of photoproduction. We outline the default inputs, implementation differences and compare the results at different stages of the event generation. We find that, despite a similar starting point, the final cross sections do have some differences related to different non-perturbative inputs. We compare the simulations with experimental data for jet production in LEP and HERA and find that all generators provide a decent desription of the data within the considered uncertainties. We also present predictions for the upcoming EIC for jet observables and event shapes and conclude that accurate simulations will require further phenomenological advances., Comment: Submission to SciPost

VBFNLO is a flexible parton level Monte Carlo program for the simulation of vector boson fusion (VBF), QCD-induced single and double vector boson production plus two jets, and double and triple vector boson production (plus jet) in hadronic collisions at next-to-leading order (NLO) in the strong coupling constant, as well as Higgs boson plus two and three jet production via gluon fusion at the one-loop level. For the new version -- Version 3.0 -- several major enhancements have been included. An interface according to the Binoth Les Houches Accord (BLHA) has been added for all VBF and di/tri-boson processes including fully leptonic decays. For all dimension-8 operators affecting vector boson scattering (VBS) processes, a modified T-matrix unitarization procedure has been implemented. Several new production processes have been added, namely the VBS $Z\gamma jj$ and $\gamma \gamma jj$ processes at NLO, $\gamma \gamma jj $, $WWj$ and $ZZj$ production at NLO including the loop-induced gluon-fusion contributions and the gluon-fusion one-loop induced $\Phi jjj$ ($\Phi$ is a CP-even or CP-odd scalar boson) process at LO, retaining the full top-mass dependence. Finally, the code has been parallelized using OpenMPI., Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures; new code available at http://ific.uv.es/vbfnlo/. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1107.4038

In the context of Monte Carlo (MC) generators with parton showers that have next-to-leading-logarithmic (NLL) precision, the cutoff $Q_0$ terminating the shower evolution should be viewed as an infrared factorization scale so that parameters or non-perturbative effects of the MC generator may have a field theoretic interpretation with a controllable scheme dependence. This implies that the generator's parton level should be carefully defined within QCD perturbation theory with subleading order precision. Furthermore, it entails that the shower cut $Q_0$ is not treated as one of the generator's tuning parameters, but that the tuning can be carried out reliably for a range of $Q_0$ values and that the hadron level description is $Q_0$-invariant. This in turn imposes non-trival constraints on the behavior of the generator's hadronization model, so that its parameters can adapt accordingly when the $Q_0$ value is changed. We investigate these features using the angular ordered parton shower and the cluster hadronization model implemented in the Herwig~7.2 MC generator focusing in particular on the $e^+e^-$ 2-jettiness distribution, where the shower is known to be NLL precise and where QCD factorization imposes stringent constraints on the hadronization corrections. We show that the Herwig default cluster hadronization model does not exhibit these features or consistency with QCD factorization with a satisfying precision. We design a modification of the cluster hadronization model, where some dynamical parton shower aspects are added that are missing in the default model. For this novel dynamical cluster hadronization model these features and consistency with QCD factorization are realized much more accurately., Comment: 54 pages, 17 figures

The standard approaches for describing top quark production and its decay dynamics are currently mostly either based on the narrow-width (NW) limit or on off-shell fixed-order calculations. In this article we present a factorised approach for boosted top quarks that combines the properties of the NW limit and off-shell computations accounting for the dominant off-shell effects in an expansion in $m_t/Q$ with the hard scattering scale $Q$. We discuss the key ideas of our approach and show some preliminary results at tree-level., Comment: Talk at the 16th International Workshop on Top Quark Physics (Top2023), 24-29 September 2023

We construct a set of Wigner 6j symbols with gluon lines (adjoint representations) in closed form, expressed in terms of similar 6j symbols with quark lines (fundamental representations). Together with Wigner 6j symbols with quark lines, this gives a set of 6j symbols sufficient for treating QCD color structure for any number of external particles, in or beyond perturbation theory. This facilitates a complete treatment of QCD color structure in terms of orthogonal multiplet bases, without the need of ever explicitly constructing the corresponding bases. We thereby open up for a completely representation theory based treatment of SU(N) color structure, with the potential of significantly speeding up the color structure treatment., Comment: 30 pages, 1 figure

A new release of the Monte Carlo event generator Herwig (version 7.3) has been launched. This iteration encompasses several enhancements over its predecessor, version 7.2. Noteworthy upgrades include: the implementation of a process-independent electroweak angular-ordered parton shower integrated with QCD and QED radiation; a new recoil scheme for initial-state radiation improving the behaviour of the angular-ordered parton shower; the incorporation of the heavy quark effective theory to refine the hadronization and decay of excited heavy mesons and heavy baryons; a dynamic strategy to regulate the kinematic threshold of cluster splittings within the cluster hadronization model; several improvements to the structure of the cluster hadronization model allowing for refined models; the possibility to extract event-by-event hadronization corrections in a well-defined way; the possibility of using the string model, with a dedicated tune. Additionally, a new tuning of the parton shower and hadronization parameters has been executed. This article discusses the novel features introduced in version 7.3.0., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures. Herwig is available from https://herwig.hepforge.org

In a few recent papers we introduced the chirality-flow formalism, which was shown to make calculations of tree-level Feynman diagrams simple and transparent. Chirality flow, which is based on the spinor-helicity formalism, allows to often immediately analytically write down a tree-level Feynman diagram in terms of spinor inner products. In this paper, we argue that there is also a significant simplification of the Lorentz structure at the one-loop level, at least when using the four-dimensional formulation of the four-dimensional helicity scheme. Additionally, we find that the possible terms in a tensor decomposition of loop integrals are highly constrained, and therefore the tensor reduction procedure is simplified., Comment: 28 pages, 1 figure

Colour evolution and parton branching at the amplitude level have become important theoretical frameworks to improve parton showers, and are algorithms in their own right: they complement shower development by resummation algorithms capable of including interference effects and subleading colour contributions at an unprecedented level. I summarize recent development in the field, focusing on soft gluon evolution, hadronization, and the CVolver framework., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, contribution to the proceedings of the 51st International Symposium on Multiparticle Dynamics (ISMD2022). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2012.15215

We study a class of SU(N) Wigner 6j symbols involving two fundamental representations, and derive explicit formulae for all 6j symbols in this class. Our formulae express the 6j symbols in terms of the dimensions of the involved representations, and they are thereby functions of N. We view these explicit formulae as a first step towards efficiently decomposing SU(N) color structures in terms of group invariants., Comment: 39 pages, 1 figure

We give a complete account of how soft gluon, massless quark, evolution equations in colour space originate, from a factorization into a hard cross section density operator and a soft function encoding measurements and the projection on definite colours. We detail this formalism up to the two loop level and we demonstrate how the evolution kernels relate to infrared subtractions, and how the resolution of infrared singular regions conspires with the structure of observables the algorithm should be able to predict. The latter allows us to address evolution in different kinematic variables, including energy ordering and angular cutoffs in non-global observables. The soft factor and its evolution resembles a hadronization model including effects such as colour reconnection, and could give insight into the structure of power corrections in observables which require soft gluon evolution., Comment: 31 pages, 2 figures, significantly extended with additional appendices and outlook, corresponds to version accepted by JHEP

We lay out the basis of factorization at the amplitude level for processes involving the entire Standard Model. The factorization appears in a generalized eikonal approximation in which we expand around a quasi-soft limit for massive gauge bosons, fermions, and scalars. We use the chirality-flow formalism to express loop exchanges or emissions as operators on chiral structures. This forms the basis for amplitude evolution with parton exchange and branching in the full Standard Model, including the electroweak sector., Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure

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., Comment: 11 pages

High energy collisions at the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produce a large number of particles along the beam collision axis, outside of the acceptance of existing LHC experiments. The proposed Forward Physics Facility (FPF), to be located several hundred meters from the ATLAS interaction point and shielded by concrete and rock, will host a suite of experiments to probe Standard Model (SM) processes and search for physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM). In this report, we review the status of the civil engineering plans and the experiments to explore the diverse physics signals that can be uniquely probed in the forward region. FPF experiments will be sensitive to a broad range of BSM physics through searches for new particle scattering or decay signatures and deviations from SM expectations in high statistics analyses with TeV neutrinos in this low-background environment. High statistics neutrino detection will also provide valuable data for fundamental topics in perturbative and non-perturbative QCD and in weak interactions. Experiments at the FPF will enable synergies between forward particle production at the LHC and astroparticle physics to be exploited. We report here on these physics topics, on infrastructure, detector, and simulation studies, and on future directions to realize the FPF's physics potential., Comment: 429 pages, contribution to Snowmass 2021

We introduce a general framework to construct multi-emission kernels for parton branching algorithms at the amplitude level and across different soft and collinear limits. We highlight the connection of kinematic parameterizations and recoil schemes to the underlying power counting, and discuss in detail how soft radiation can be partitioned in between different collinear configurations beyond the single-emission picture underpinning the traditional dipole and angular ordering approaches. Our work is a vital cornerstone to build parton branching algorithms which include multiply-unresolved emissions in a fully differential way, and our construction can also be used to obtain splitting functions for probabilistic algorithms or other cross-section level objects such as subtraction terms., Comment: 50 pages + appendices

Guided by the colour-diagonal structure of collinear singularities, we identify a set of kinematic basis functions that are well suited to the simplification of soft gluon emission amplitudes. In particular, these basis functions, which emerge naturally in the colour flow basis, isolate the subleading colour contributions and improve the statistical convergence of the CVolver amplitude-evolution code. They also allow us to extend current angular-ordered parton showers beyond the azimuthally-averaged, two-jet limit., Comment: 29 pages + appendices, 6 figures, MCNET-21-13, v2 accepted for publication in JHEP, v3 broken references fixed

We consider the impact of multi-parton interactions, colour reconnection and hadronization on the modeling of vector boson fusion and vector boson scattering (VBS) final states at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We investigate how the variation of the model parameters, compatible with a reasonable spread of predictions around typical tuning observables, extrapolates into the VBS phase space. We study the implications of this variation on the total uncertainty budget attached to realistic simulation of the final states in current event generator predictions. We find that the variations have a non-trivial phase space dependence and become comparable in size to the perturbative uncertainties once next-to-leading order predictions are combined with parton shower evolution., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures. Additional figures can be found at: https://cern.ch/apapaefs/VBSQCD/

This paper has been prepared by the HEP Software Foundation (HSF) Physics Event Generator Working Group (WG), as an input to the second phase of the LHCC review of High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) computing, which is due to take place in November 2021. It complements previous documents prepared by the WG in the context of the first phase of the LHCC review in 2020, including in particular the WG paper on the specific challenges in Monte Carlo event generator software for HL-LHC, which has since been updated and published, and which we are also submitting to the November 2021 review as an integral part of our contribution., Comment: 34 pages; editors Efe Yazgan, Josh McFayden and Andrea Valassi

We present results of the simulation of electroweak Higgs boson production at the Large Hadron Collider using both the NLO multijet merging and NLO matching frameworks provided by the general purpose event generator Herwig 7. For the simulation of the hard scattering processes, we use the HJets library for the full calculation and VBFNLO for the approximate calculation to compute the $2\to h+n$ amplitudes at tree-level with $n=2,3,4$ and at one-loop with $n=2,3$., Comment: accepted version, 13 pages, 8 figures

We calculate the two-loop and one-loop/one-emission contributions required for soft gluon evolution at the next-to-leading order. The colour structures are expressed in the colour flow basis, and the kinematic dependence and loop integrals are expressed in terms of multiple cuts and phase-space-like integrals. This directly allows to use them in the resummation of non-global observables and improved parton shower algorithms beyond the leading order and beyond the leading colour limit. Within the colour flow basis it becomes apparent that correlations beyond a dipole picture emerge even in colour-diagonal elements of the virtual corrections., Comment: 38 pages, 2 tables, 2 figures and several diagrams, detailed appendices

Following an explicit example, we present the chain of steps required for an event-by-event description of hadron production in high energy hadronic and nuclear collisions. We start from incoming nuclei, described in the Color Glass Condensate effective theory, whose collision creates the gluon fields of the glasma. Individual gluons are then sampled from the gluon fields' Husimi (smeared Wigner) distributions, and clustered using a new spacetime based algorithm. Clusters are fed into the Herwig event generator, which performs the hadronization, conserving energy and momentum. We discuss the physical implications of smearing and problems with the quasi particle picture for the studied processes. We compute spectra of charged hadrons and identified particles and their azimuthal momentum anisotropies, and address systematic uncertainties on observables, resulting from the general lack of detailed knowledge of the hadronization mechanism., Comment: 12 pages, 15 figures

The dipole formalism provides a powerful framework from which parton showers can be constructed. In a recent paper, we proposed a dipole shower with improved colour accuracy and in this paper we show how it can be further improved. After an explicit check at $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_{\mathrm{s}}^{2})$ we confirm that our original shower performs as it was designed to, i.e. inheriting its handling of angular-ordered radiation from a coherent branching algorithm. We also show how other dipole shower algorithms fail to achieve this. Nevertheless, there is an $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_{\mathrm{s}}^{2})$ topology where it differs at sub-leading $N_{\mathrm{c}}$ from a coherent branching algorithm. This erroneous topology can contribute a leading logarithm to some observables and corresponds to emissions that are ordered in $k_t$ but not angle. We propose a simple, computationally efficient way to correct this and assign colour factors in accordance with the coherence properties of QCD to all orders in $\alpha_{\mathrm{s}}$., Comment: 26 pages, 2 appendices, 9 figures. Version 2 contains small changes and is inline with the version published in EPJ C

Common and community software packages, such as ROOT, Geant4 and event generators have been a key part of the LHC's success so far and continued development and optimisation will be critical in the future. The challenges are driven by an ambitious physics programme, notably the LHC accelerator upgrade to high-luminosity, HL-LHC, and the corresponding detector upgrades of ATLAS and CMS. In this document we address the issues for software that is used in multiple experiments (usually even more widely than ATLAS and CMS) and maintained by teams of developers who are either not linked to a particular experiment or who contribute to common software within the context of their experiment activity. We also give space to general considerations for future software and projects that tackle upcoming challenges, no matter who writes it, which is an area where community convergence on best practice is extremely useful., Comment: 40 pages contribution to Snowmass 2021

We present first results of resumming soft gluon effects in a simulation of high energy collisions beyond the leading-colour approximation. We work to all orders in QCD perturbation theory using a new parton branching algorithm. This amplitude evolution algorithm resembles a parton shower that is able to systematically include colour-suppressed terms. We find that colour suppressed terms can significantly contribute to jet veto cross sections., Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures; update to plots after bugfix, minor changes to formulations; no qualitative change

We review the main software and computing challenges for the Monte Carlo physics event generators used by the LHC experiments, in view of the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) physics programme. This paper has been prepared by the HEP Software Foundation (HSF) Physics Event Generator Working Group as an input to the LHCC review of HL-LHC computing, which has started in May 2020., Comment: 20 pages; editors Andrea Valassi, Efe Yazgan and Josh McFayden; addressed additional comments by journal reviewers

We present a systematic investigation of parton-shower and matching perturbative uncertainties for Higgs-boson production via vector-boson fusion. To this end we employ different generators at next-to-leading order QCD accuracy matched with shower Monte Carlo programs, PYTHIA8, and HERWIG7, and a next-to-next-to-leading order QCD calculation. We thoroughly analyse the intrinsic sources of uncertainty within each generator, and then compare predictions among the different tools using the respective recommended setups. Within typical vector-boson fusion cuts, the resulting uncertainties on observables that are accurate to next-to-leading order are at the 10% level for rates and even smaller for shapes. For observables sensitive to extra radiation effects uncertainties of about 20% are found. We furthermore show how a specific recoil scheme is needed when PYTHIA8 is employed, in order not to encounter unphysical enhancements for these observables. We conclude that for vector-boson fusion processes an assessment of the uncertainties associated with simulation at next-to-leading order matched to parton showers based only on the variation of renormalisation, factorisation and shower scales systematically underestimates their true size., Comment: v2 matches the version published on EPJC

A new parton shower algorithm has been presented with the claim of providing soft-gluon resummation at `full colour' (arXiv:2001.11492). In this paper we show that the algorithm does not succeed in this goal. We show that full colour accuracy requires the Sudakov factors to be defined at amplitude level and that the simple parton-shower unitarity argument employed in arXiv:2001.11492 is not sufficient., Comment: 7 pages

Modern parton showers are built using one of two models: dipole showers or angular ordered showers. Both have distinct strengths and weaknesses. Dipole showers correctly account for wide-angle, soft gluon emissions and track the leading flows in QCD colour charge but they are known to mishandle partonic recoil. Angular ordered showers keep better track of partonic recoil and correctly include large amounts of wide-angle, soft physics but azimuthal averaging means they are known to mishandle some correlations. In this paper, we derive both approaches from the same starting point; linking our understanding of the two showers. This insight allows us to construct a new dipole shower that has all the strengths of a standard dipole shower together with those of an angular ordered shower. We show that this new approach corrects the next-to-leading-log errors previously observed in parton showers and improves their sub-leading-colour accuracy., Comment: 17 pages, 28 pages of appendices, 3 figures; version 2 adds minor edits, a discussion of phase-space limits, and addresses comments on colour accuracy. Accepted by JHEP

Non-perturbative gauge-invariance under the strong and the weak interactions dictates that the proton contains a non-vanishing valence contribution from the Higgs particle. By introducing an additional parton distribution function (PDF), we investigate the experimental consequences of this prediction. The Herwig 7 event generator and a parametrized CMS detector simulation are used to obtain predictions for a scenario amounting to the LHC Run II data set. We use those to assess the impact of the Higgs PDF on the pp->ttbar process in the single lepton final state. Comparing to nominal simulation we derive expected limits as a function of the shape of the valence Higgs PDF. We also investigate the process pp->ttZ at the parton level to add further constraints., Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables; v2: Minor extensions and added references

We demonstrate that the method of interleaved resampling in the context of parton showers can tremendously improve the statistical convergence of weighted parton shower evolution algorithms. We illustrate this by several examples showing significant statistical improvement., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures

Manifest gauge-invariance requires that observable states in the standard-model are described by composite operators, which involve additional Higgs contributions beyond perturbation theory. This field-theoretical effect has been confirmed in lattice simulations. It should also be experimentally accessible at high enough precision. Here a few estimates for such signatures at current and future collider experiments will be discussed., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, EPSHep 2019, July 10-17, 2019, Ghent, Belgium, submitted to the proceedings

We investigate the phenomenological aspects of non-perturbative baryon- and lepton-number-violating processes at hadron colliders. Such processes, induced by instanton/sphaleron configurations of the electroweak gauge fields, are believed to play a crucial role in the generation of baryon asymmetry in the early Universe at finite temperature. On the other hand, at colliders (that represent the zero-temperature high-energy regime) the rate and observability of such processes are still under debate. Motivated by current theoretical considerations, we construct a modern event generator within the general-purpose Herwig Monte Carlo framework, that aims to capture the most relevant features of the dominant processes. We perform a detailed phenomenological analysis focussing on the Large Hadron Collider, at 13 TeV proton-proton centre-of-mass energy, a potential high-energy upgrade at 27 TeV and the proposed Future Circular Collider (FCC-hh) at 100 TeV. We derive constraints on the expected rates for various parametrisations of our model. We find that all three colliders are capable of providing meaningful information on the nature of instanton/sphaleron-induced processes at various energy scales., Comment: 23 pages, 12 figures

This document reports the first year of activity of the VBSCan COST Action network, as summarised by the talks and discussions happened during the VBSCan Thessaloniki 2018 workshop. The VBSCan COST action is aiming at a consistent and coordinated study of vector-boson scattering from the phenomenological and experimental point of view, for the best exploitation of the data that will be delivered by existing and future particle colliders., Comment: Editors: Lucrezia Stella Bruni, Roberto Covarelli, Pietro Govoni, Piergiulio Lenzi, Narei Lorenzo-Martinez, Joany Manjarres, Matthias Ulrich Mozer, Giacomo Ortona, Mathieu Pellen, Daniela Rebuzzi, Magdalena Slawinska, Marco Zaro. Proceedings for the second annual meeting of the VBSCan COST action

We present an algorithm that evolves hard processes at the amplitude level by dressing them iteratively with (massless) quarks and gluons. The algorithm interleaves collinear emissions with soft emissions and includes Coulomb/Glauber exchanges. It includes all orders in $N_{\mathrm{c}}$, is spin dependent and is able to accommodate kinematic recoils. Although it is specified at leading logarithmic accuracy, the framework should be sufficient to go beyond. Coulomb exchanges make the factorisation of collinear and soft emissions highly non-trivial. In the absence of Coulomb exchanges, we show how factorisation works out and how a partial factorisation is manifest in the presence of Coulomb exchanges. Finally, we illustrate the use of the algorithm by deriving DGLAP evolution and computing the resummed thrust, hemisphere jet mass and gaps-between-jets distributions in $e^+ e^-$., Comment: 54 pages, minor changes in version 2

We perform a phenomenological study of $Z$ plus jet, Higgs plus jet and di-jet production at the Large Hadron Collider. We investigate in particular the dependence of the leading jet cross section on the jet radius as a function of the jet transverse momentum. Theoretical predictions are obtained using perturbative QCD calculations at the next-to and next-to-next-to-leading order, using a range of renormalization and factorization scales. The fixed order predictions are compared to results obtained from matching next-to-leading order calculations to parton showers. A study of the scale dependence as a function of the jet radius is used to provide a better estimate of the scale uncertainty for small jet sizes. The non-perturbative corrections as a function of jet radius are estimated from different generators., Comment: 23 pages, 19 figures

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., Comment: Monte Carlo Community input to European Strategy Update

We evaluate the theoretical uncertainties in next-to-leading order plus parton shower predictions for top quark pair production and decay in hadronic collisions. Our work is carried out using the Herwig 7 event generator and presents an in-depth study of variations in matching schemes with two systematically different shower algorithms, the traditional angular-ordered and alternative dipole shower. We also present all of the required extensions of the Herwig dipole shower algorithm to properly take into account quark mass effects, as well as its ability to perform top quark decays. The predictions are compared at parton level as well as to LHC data, including in the boosted regime. We find that the regions where predictions with a non-top-quark-specific tune differ drastically from data are plagued by large uncertainties which are consistent between our two shower and matching algorithms., Comment: 38 pages, 19 figures

We consider soft gluon evolution at the amplitude level to expose the structure of colour reconnection from a perturbative point of view. Considering the cluster hadronization model and an universal Ansatz for the soft anomalous dimension we find strong support for geometric models considered earlier. We also show how reconnection into baryonic systems arises, and how larger cluster systems evolve. Our results provide the dynamic basis for a new class of colour reconnection models for cluster hadronization., Comment: 24 pages, 15 figures

We investigate the effects of keeping the full color structure for parton emissions in parton showers for both LEP and LHC. This is done within the Herwig 7 dipole shower, and includes gluon emission, gluon splitting, initial state branching processes, as well as hadronization. The subleading Nc terms are included as color matrix element corrections to the splitting kernels by evolving an amplitude-level density operator and correcting the radiation pattern for each parton multiplicity, up to a fixed number of full color emissions, after which a standard leading color shower takes over. Our results are compared to data for a wide range of LEP and LHC observables and show that the subleading Nc corrections tend to be small for most observables probing hard, perturbative dynamics, for both LEP and LHC. However, for some of these observables they exceed 10%. On soft physics we find signs of significantly larger effects., Comment: 25 pages, 10 figures

We show that the presence of an infrared cutoff $Q_0$ in the parton shower (PS) evolution for massive quarks implies that the generator quark mass corresponds to a $Q_0$-dependent short-distance mass scheme and is therefore not the pole mass. Our analysis considers an angular ordered parton shower based on the coherent branching formalism for quasi-collinear stable heavy quarks and splitting functions at next-to-leading logarithmic (NLL) order, and it is based on the analysis of the peak of hemisphere jet mass distributions. We show that NLL shower evolution is sufficient to describe the peak jet mass at full next-to-leading order (NLO). We determine the relation of this short-distance mass to the pole mass at NLO. We also show that the shower cut $Q_0$ affects soft radiation in a universal way for massless and quasi-collinear massive quark production. The basis of our analysis is (i) an analytic solution of the PS evolution based on the coherent branching formalism, (ii) an implementation of the infrared cut $Q_0$ of the angular ordered shower into factorized analytic calculations in the framework of Soft-Collinear-Effective-Theory (SCET) and (iii) the dependence of the peak of the jet mass distribution on the shower cut. Numerical comparisons to simulations with the HERWIG 7 event generator confirm our findings. Our analysis provides an important step towards a full understanding concerning the interpretation of top quark mass measurements based on direct reconstruction., Comment: 110 pages, 23 figures; v2: improved version, references updated, typos eliminated

Vector-boson scattering processes are of great importance for the current run-II and future runs of the Large Hadron Collider. The presence of triple and quartic gauge couplings in the process gives access to the gauge sector of the Standard Model (SM) and possible new-physics contributions there. To test any new-physics hypothesis, sound knowledge of the SM contributions is necessary, with a precision which at least matches the experimental uncertainties of existing and forthcoming measurements. In this article we present a detailed study of the vector-boson scattering process with two positively-charged leptons and missing transverse momentum in the final state. In particular, we first carry out a systematic comparison of the various approximations that are usually performed for this kind of process against the complete calculation, at LO and NLO QCD accuracy. Such a study is performed both in the usual fiducial region used by experimental collaborations and in a more inclusive phase space, where the differences among the various approximations lead to more sizeable effects. Afterwards, we turn to predictions matched to parton showers, at LO and NLO: we show that on the one hand, the inclusion of NLO QCD corrections leads to more stable predictions, but on the other hand the details of the matching and of the parton-shower programs cause differences which are considerably larger than those observed at fixed order, even in the experimental fiducial region. We conclude with recommendations for experimental studies of vector-boson scattering processes., Comment: Data and input files are available at: https://github.com/VBSCanAction/VBSComparison/ . 28 pages including figures and references. Matches the journal version

We consider electro-weak Higgs plus three jets production at NLO QCD beyond strict VBF acceptance cuts. We investigate, for the first time, how accurate the VBF approximation is in these regions and within perturbative uncertainties, by a detailed comparison of full and approximate calculations. We find that a rapidity gap between the tagging jets guarantees a good approximation, while an invariant mass cut alone is not sufficient, which needs to be confronted with experimental choices. We also find that a significant part of the QCD corrections can be attributed to Higgs-Strahlungs-type topologies., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, add VBSCAN report number

We consider soft-gluon evolution at the amplitude level. Our evolution includes Coulomb exchanges and applies to generic hard-scattering processes involving any number of coloured partons. We emphasise the special role played by a Lorentz-invariant evolution variable, which coincides with the transverse momentum of the latest emission in a suitably defined dipole zero-momentum frame. We also relate the evolution algorithm, which was used originally in the derivation of super-leading logarithms, to renormalization group evolution equations that have been encountered recently. Handling large colour matrices presents the most significant challenge to numerical implementations and we present a means to expand systematically about the leading colour approximation., Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures

A summary of recent developments in the simulation of top quark production and decay in the Herwig Monte Carlo event generator., Comment: Presented at 10th International Workshop on Top Quark Physics 2017 (TOP 2017), Braga, Portugal

We present an extension to the colour reconnection model in the Monte-Carlo event generator Herwig to account for the production of baryons and compare it to a series of observables for soft physics. The new model is able to improve the description of charged-particle mutliplicities and hadron flavour observables in pp collisions, Comment: 13 pages; v3: updated to match journal version

A new release of the Monte Carlo event generator Herwig (version 7.1) is now available. This version introduces a number of improvements, notably: multi-jet merging with the dipole shower at LO and NLO QCD; a new model for soft interactions and diffraction; improvements to mass effects and top decays in the dipole shower, as well as a new tune of the hadronisation parameters., Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures. Herwig is available from https://herwig.hepforge.org/