Search

Event generators like Pythia play an important role in physics studies at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). While they make accurate predictions in the central region, i.e. at pseudorapidities $\eta<5$, a disagreement between Pythia and measurements in the forward region, $\eta>7$, has been observed. We introduce a dedicated forward physics tune for the Pythia event generator to be used for forward physics studies at the LHC, which uses a more flexible modelling of beam remnant hadronization and is tuned to available particle spectra measured by LHCf. Furthermore, we provide an uncertainty estimate on the new tune in a data-driven way which can be used as a means of flux uncertainty for future forward physics studies. We demonstrate an application of our tune by showing the updated neutrino and dark photon spectra at the FASER experiment.

Hadronic interaction models are a core ingredient of simulations of extensive air showers and pose the major source of uncertainties of predictions of air shower observables. Recently, Pythia~8, a hadronic interaction model popular in accelerator-based high-energy physics, became usable in air shower simulations as well. We have integrated Pythia~8 with its new capabilities into the air shower simulation framework CORSIKA~8. First results show significantly shallower shower development, which we attribute to higher cross-section predictions by the new simplified nuclear model of Pythia., Comment: Proceedings of UHECR 2022

This paper presents a comprehensive review of both the theory and experimental successes of Quantum Chromodynamics, starting with its emergence as a well defined theory in 1972-73 and following developments and results up to the present day. Topics include a review of the earliest theoretical and experimental foundations; the fundamental constants of QCD; an introductory discussion of lattice QCD, the only known method for obtaining exact predictions from QCD; methods for approximating QCD, with special focus on effective field theories; QCD under extreme conditions; measurements and predictions of meson and baryon states; a special discussion of the structure of the nucleon; techniques for study of QCD at high energy, including treatment of jets and showers; measurements at colliders; weak decays and quark mixing; and a section on the future, which discusses new experimental facilities or upgrades currently funded. The paper is intended to provide a broad background for Ph.D. students and postdocs starting their career. Some contributions include personal accounts of how the ideas or experiments were developed., Comment: Invited volume for the EJPC; 567 pages if text/figures and 4783 references occupying about 160 additional pages. arXiv abstract abridged, for the complete abstract please see the full text

This is the Snowmass2021 Energy Frontier (EF) Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) report. It combines the EF topical group reports of EF08 (Model-specific explorations), EF09 (More general explorations), and EF10 (Dark Matter at Colliders). The report includes a general introduction to BSM motivations and the comparative prospects for proposed future experiments for a broad range of potential BSM models and signatures, including compositeness, SUSY, leptoquarks, more general new bosons and fermions, long-lived particles, dark matter, charged-lepton flavor violation, and anomaly detection., Comment: 108 pages + 38 pages references and appendix, 37 figures, Report of the Topical Group on Beyond the Standard Model Physics at Energy Frontier for Snowmass 2021. The first nine authors are the Conveners, with Contributions from the other authors

Soft QCD is beyond perturbative control, and therefore phenomenological models have to be developed. These are implemented and combined within event generators. Typical aspects considered are multiparton interactions, colour reconnection, and hadronization. Of special interest are non-universal features of hadronization at the LHC, such as the recently observed enhancement of charm and bottom baryons, and the bottom baryon asymmetry, as well as the some years earlier observed strangeness enhancement. Several new production mechanisms, such as junction reconnection, ropes and shove, have been proposed to address some of these issues. Alternatively, an admixture of a quark--gluon plasma component also in pp collisions is introduced in the core--corona approach., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, presented at The Tenth Annual Conference on Large Hadron Collider Physics - LHCP2022, 16-20 May 2022, online

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/

In this work, we consider the case of a strongly coupled dark/hidden sector, which extends the Standard Model (SM) by adding an additional non-Abelian gauge group. These extensions generally contain matter fields, much like the SM quarks, and gauge fields similar to the SM gluons. We focus on the exploration of such sectors where the dark particles are produced at the LHC through a portal and undergo rapid hadronization within the dark sector before decaying back, at least in part and potentially with sizeable lifetimes, to SM particles, giving a range of possibly spectacular signatures such as emerging or semi-visible jets. Other, non-QCD-like scenarios leading to soft unclustered energy patterns or glueballs are also discussed. After a review of the theory, existing benchmarks and constraints, this work addresses how to build consistent benchmarks from the underlying physical parameters and present new developments for the PYTHIA Hidden Valley module, along with jet substructure studies. Finally, a series of improved search strategies is presented in order to pave the way for a better exploration of the dark showers at the LHC., Comment: Uniform notation, fixed typos, improved numerical analysis, added references, comments welcome

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

The Forward Physics Facility (FPF) is a proposal to create a cavern with the space and infrastructure to support a suite of far-forward experiments at the Large Hadron Collider during the High Luminosity era. Located along the beam collision axis and shielded from the interaction point by at least 100 m of concrete and rock, the FPF will house experiments that will detect particles outside the acceptance of the existing large LHC experiments and will observe rare and exotic processes in an extremely low-background environment. In this work, we summarize the current status of plans for the FPF, including recent progress in civil engineering in identifying promising sites for the FPF and the experiments currently envisioned to realize the FPF's physics potential. We then review the many Standard Model and new physics topics that will be advanced by the FPF, including searches for long-lived particles, probes of dark matter and dark sectors, high-statistics studies of TeV neutrinos of all three flavors, aspects of perturbative and non-perturbative QCD, and high-energy astroparticle physics., Comment: revised version, accepted by Physics Reports

The Pythia event generator is used in several contexts to study hadron and lepton interactions, notably $pp$ and $p\bar{p}$ collisions. In this article we extend the hadronic modelling to encompass the collision of a wide range of hadrons $h$ with either a proton or a neutron, or with a simplified model of nuclear matter. To this end we model $hp$ total and partial cross sections as a function of energy, and introduce new parton distribution functions for a wide range of hadrons, as required for a proper modelling of multiparton interactions. The potential usefulness of the framework is illustrated by a simple study of the evolution of cosmic rays in the atmosphere, and by an even simpler one of shower evolution in a solid detector material. The new code will be made available for future applications., Comment: 45 pages, 15 figures

In a recent article we presented a model for hadronic rescattering, and some results were shown for pp collisions at LHC energies. In order to extend the studies to pA and AA collisions, the Angantyr model for heavy-ion collisions is taken as the starting point. Both these models are implemented within the general-purpose Monte Carlo event generator Pythia, which makes the matching reasonably straightforward, and allows for detailed studies of the full space--time evolution. The rescattering rate is significantly higher than in pp, especially for central AA collisions, where the typical primary hadron rescatters several times. We study the impact of rescattering on a number of distributions, such as pT and eta spectra, and the space--time evolution of the whole collision process. Notably rescattering is shown to give a significant contribution to elliptic flow in XeXe and PbPb, and to give a nontrivial impact on charm production., Comment: 38 pages, 16 figures

In this article, a framework for hadronic rescattering in the general-purpose Pythia event generator is introduced. The starting point is the recently presented space-time picture of the hadronization process. It is now extended with a tracing of the subsequent motion of the primary hadrons, including both subsequent scattering processes among them and decays of them. The major new component is cross-section parameterizations for a range of possible hadron-hadron combinations, applicable from threshold energies upwards. The production dynamics in these collisions has also been extended to cope with different kinds of low-energy processes. The properties of the model are studied, and some first comparisons with LHC pp data are presented. Whereas it turns out that approximately half of all final particles participated in rescatterings, the net effects in pp events are still rather limited, and only striking in a few distributions. The new code opens up for several future studies, however, such as effects in pA and AA collisions., Comment: 61 pages, 24 figures, 10 tables

The evolution of the widely-used PYTHIA particle physics event generator is outlined, from the early days to the current status and plans. The key decisions and the development of the major physics components are put in context., Comment: 25 pages, 2 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

The assumption of linear confinement leads to a proportionality of the energy-momentum and space-time pictures of fragmentation for a simple qqbar system in the Lund string model. The hadronization of more complicated systems is more difficult to describe, and in the past only the energy-momentum picture has been implemented. In this article also the space-time picture is worked out, for open and closed multiparton topologies, for junction systems, and for massive quarks. Some first results are presented, for toy systems but in particular for LHC events. The density of hadron production is quantified under different conditions. The (not unexpected) conclusion is that this density can become quite high, and thereby motivate the observed collective behaviour in high-multiplicity pp collisions. The new framework, made available as part of the Pythia event generator, offers a starting point for future model building in a number of respects, such as hadronic rescattering., Comment: 43 pages. Version 2 contains a new section 3.7 plus a few other minor additions, as requested by the referee. In addition an updated reference list and a few typo corrections. None of the original physics arguments or conclusions are affected, however

Collective effects are observed in high-multiplicity pp events, similar to the signals traditionally attributed to the formation of a Quark Gluon Plasma in heavy ion collisions. In core--corona models it is assumed that a partial plasma formation is indeed possible also in pp, but here the focus is on several recent models that attempt to explain pp data without invoking plasma formation. These attempts are partly successful, but there is still not a unified framework., Comment: 8 pages, presented at XXVIIth International Conference on Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (Quark Matter 2018)

The LHC has brought much new information on total, elastic and diffractive cross sections, which is not always in agreement with extrapolations from lower energies. The default framework in the Pythia event generator is one case in point. In this article we study and implement two recent models, as more realistic alternatives. Both describe total and elastic cross sections, whereas one also includes single diffraction. Noting some issues at high energies, a variant of the latter is proposed, and extended also to double and central diffraction. Further, the experimental definition of diffraction is based on the presence of rapidity gaps, which however also could be caused by colour reconnection in nondiffractive events, a phenomenon that is studied in the context of a specific model. Throughout comparisons with LHC and other data are presented., Comment: 37 pages, 18 figures, 2 tables

Parton showers have become a standard component in the description of high-energy collisions. Nowadays most final-state ones are of the dipole character, wherein a pair of partons branches into three, with energy and momentum preserved inside this subsystem. For initial-state showers a dipole picture is also possible and commonly used, but the older global-recoil strategy remains a valid alternative, wherein larger groups of partons share the energy--momentum preservation task. In this article we introduce and implement a dipole picture also for initial-state radiation in PYTHIA, and compare with the existing global-recoil one, and with data. For the case of Deeply Inelastic Scattering we can directly compare with matrix element expressions and show that the dipole picture gives a very good description over the whole phase space, at least for the first branching., Comment: 31 pages, 17 figures and 3 tables

Many of the basic ideas in multiparton interaction (MPI) phenomenology were first developed in the context of the PYTHIA event generator, and MPIs have been central in its modelling of both minimum-bias and underlying-event physics in one unified framework. This chapter traces the evolution towards an increasingly sophisticated description of MPIs in PYTHIA, including topics such as the ordering of MPIs, the regularization of the divergent QCD cross section, the impact-parameter picture, colour reconnection, multiparton PDFs and beam remnants, interleaved and intertwined evolution, and diffraction., Comment: To be published in "Multiple Parton Interactions at the LHC", P. Bartalini and J. R. Gaunt, eds., World Scientific; 42 pages, 5 figures

The observation of heavy-ion-like behaviour in pp collisions at the LHC suggests that more physics mechanisms are at play than traditionally assumed. The introduction e.g. of quark-gluon plasma or colour rope formation can describe several of the observations, but as of yet there is no established paradigm. In this article we study a few possible modifications to the Pythia event generator, which describes a wealth of data but fails for a number of recent observations. Firstly, we present a new model for generating the transverse momentum of hadrons during the string fragmentation process, inspired by thermodynamics, where heavier hadrons naturally are suppressed in rate but obtain a higher average transverse momentum. Secondly, close-packing of strings is taken into account by making the temperature or string tension environment-dependent. Thirdly, a simple model for hadron rescattering is added. The effect of these modifications is studied, individually and taken together, and compared with data mainly from the LHC. While some improvements can be noted, it turns out to be nontrivial to obtain effects as big as required, and further work is called for.

Event generators play a crucial role in the exploration of LHC physics. This presentation summarizes news and plans for the three general-purpose pp generators HERWIG, PYTHIA and SHERPA, as well as briefer notes on a few other generators. Common themes, such as the matching and merging between matrix elements and parton showers, are highlighted. Other topics include a historical introduction, from the Lund perspective, and comments on the role of MCnet., Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures, presented at the Fourth Annual Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference (LHCP2016), 13--18 June 2016, Lund, Sweden

We present a new framework for the modelling of hard diffraction in pp and ppbar collisions. It starts from the the approach pioneered by Ingelman and Schlein, wherein the single diffractive cross section is factorized into a Pomeron flux and a Pomeron PDF. To this it adds a dynamically calculated rapidity gap survival factor, derived from the modelling of multiparton interactions. This factor is not relevant for diffraction in ep collisions, giving non-universality between HERA and Tevatron diffractive event rates. The model has been implemented in Pythia 8 and provides a complete description of the hadronic state associated with any hard single diffractive process. Comparisons with ppbar and pp data reveal improvement in the description of single diffractive events., Comment: 30 pages, 13 figures. Replaced with published version

The effects of colour reconnection (CR) at $\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^-$ colliders are revisited, with focus on recently developed CR models. The new models are compared with the LEP2 measurements for $\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^- \to \mathrm{W}^+\mathrm{W}^- \to\mathrm{q}_1 \overline{\mathrm{q}}_2 \mathrm{q}_3 \overline{\mathrm{q}}_4$ and found to lie within their limits. Prospects for constraints from new high-luminosity $\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^-$ colliders are discussed. The novel arena of CR in Higgs decays is introduced, and illustrated by shifts in angular correlations that would be used to set limits on a potential $CP$-odd admixture of the 125 GeV Higgs state., Comment: 11 pages, 4 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., Comment: 45 pages

The modeling of color reconnection has become one of the dominant sources of systematic uncertainty in the top mass determination at hadron colliders. The uncertainty on the top mass due to color reconnection is conventionally estimated by taking the difference in the predictions of a model with and a model without color reconnection. We show that this procedure underestimates the uncertainty when applied to the existing models in {\sc Pythia}~8. We introduce two new classes of color reconnection models, each containing several variants, which encompass a variety of scenarios that could be realized in nature and we study how they affect the reconstruction of the top mass. After tuning the new models to existing LHC data, the remaining spread of predictions is used to derive a more realistic uncertainty for the top mass, which is found to be around 500 MeV. We also propose how future LHC measurements with $t\bar{t}$ events can be used to further constrain these models and reduce the associated modeling uncertainty., Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures

The emission of W and Z gauge boson is included in a traditional QCD + QED shower. The unitarity of the shower algorithm links the real radiation of the weak gauge bosons to the negative weak virtual corrections. The shower evolution process leads to a competition between QCD, QED and weak radiation, and allows for W and Z boson production inside jets. Various effects on LHC physics are studied, both at low and high transverse momenta, and effects at higher-energy hadron colliders are outlined., Comment: 35 pages, 16 figures

There are experimental evidence for the occurrence of colour reconnection, but the mechanisms involved are far from understood. Previous reconnection studies are briefly summarized, and some potential implications for LHC physics are outlined., Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the proceedings of the XLIII International Symposium on Multiparticle Dynamics (ISMD13), Chicago, USA, 15 -- 20 September 2013

Theoretical arguments, supported by other indirect evidence, suggest that the wave function of high-x partons should be narrower than that of low-x ones. In this article, we present a modification to the variable impact parameter framework of Pythia 8 to model this effect. In particular, a Gaussian hadronic matter profile is introduced, with a width dependent on the x value of the constituent being probed. Results are compared against the default single- and double-Gaussian profiles, as well as an intermediate overlap function.

General-purpose Monte Carlo event generators have become important tools in particle physics, allowing the simulation of exclusive hadronic final states. In this article we examine the Pythia 8 generator, in particular focusing on its parton-shower algorithms. Some relevant new additions to the code are introduced, that should allow for a better description of data. We also implement and compare with 2 to 3 real-emission QCD matrix elements, to check how well the shower algorithm fills the phase space away from the soft and collinear regions. A tuning of the generator to Tevatron data is performed for two PDF sets and the impact of first new LHC data is examined.

A selection of the latest and most frequently used parton distribution functions (PDFs) is incorporated in Pythia8, including the Monte Carlo-adapted PDFs from the MSTW and CTEQ collaborations. This article examines the differences in PDFs as well as the effect they have on results of simulations and compare with data collected by the CDF experiment. Monte Carlo-adapted PDFs do a better job than leading- and next-to-leading order PDFs for many observables, but there is room for further improvements., Comment: 14 pages

Several methods to improve the parton-shower description of hard processes by an injection of matrix-element-based information have been presented over the years. In this article we study (re)weighting schemes for the first/hardest emission. One objective is to provide a consistent matching of the POWHEG next-to-leading order generator to the Pythia shower algorithms. Another is to correct the default behaviour of these showers at large transverse momenta, based on a comparison with real-emission matrix elements.

Given the current landscape in experimental high-energy physics, these lectures are focused on applications of event generators for hadron colliders like the Tevatron and LHC. Section 2 contains a first overview of the physics picture and the generator landscape. Thereafter section 3 describes the usage of matrix elements, section 4 the important topics of initial- and final-state showers, and section 5 how showers can be matched to different hard processes. The issue of multiparton interactions and their role in mimimum-bias and underlying-event physics is introduced in section 6, followed by some comments on hadronization in section 7. The article concludes with an outlook on the ongoing generator-development work in section 8., Comment: 27 pages, to appear in the proceedings of the 65th Scottish Universities Summer School in Physics: LHC Physics, St Andrews, 16 - 29 August 2009

The concept of multiple partonic interactions in hadronic events is vital for the understanding of both minimum-bias and underlying-event physics. The area is rather little studied, however, and current models offer a far from complete coverage, even of the effects we know ought to be there. In this article we address one such topic, namely that of rescattering, where an already scattered parton is allowed to take part in another subsequent scattering. A framework for rescattering is introduced for the Pythia 8 event generator and fully integrated with normal multiparton interactions and initial- and final-state radiation. Using this model, the effects on event structure are studied, and distributions are shown both for minimum-bias and jet events.

Pythia 8, the C++ rewrite of the commonly-used Pythia event generator, is now available in a first full-fledged version 8.1. The older Pythia 6.4 generator in Fortran 77 is still maintained, for now, but users are strongly recommended to try out and move to the new version as soon as feasible., Comment: 5 pages, to appear in the proceedings of the HERA and the LHC workshop, 26--30 May 2008, CERN

The PYTHIA program is a standard tool for the generation of high-energy collisions, comprising a coherent set of physics models for the evolution from a few-body hard process to a complex multihadronic final state. It contains a library of hard processes and models for initial- and final-state parton showers, multiple parton-parton interactions, beam remnants, string fragmentation and particle decays. It also has a set of utilities and interfaces to external programs. While previous versions were written in Fortran, PYTHIA 8 represents a complete rewrite in C++. The current release is the first main one after this transition, and does not yet in every respect replace the old code. It does contain some new physics aspects, on the other hand, that should make it an attractive option especially for LHC physics studies., Comment: 27 pages

The structure of events in high-energy collisions is complex and not predictable from first principles. Event generators allow the problem to be subdivided into more manageable pieces, some of which can be described from first principles, while others need to be based on appropriate models with parameters tuned to data. In these lectures we provide an overview, discuss how matrix elements are used, introduce the machinery for initial- and final-state parton showers, explain how matrix elements and parton showers can be combined for optimal accuracy, introduce the concept of multiple parton--parton interactions, comment briefly on the hadronization issue, and provide an outlook for the future., Comment: 23 pages, lectures presented at the 2006 European School of High-Energy Physics, Aronsborg, Sweden, 18 June -- 1 July 2006

The PYTHIA program can be used to generate high-energy-physics `events', i.e. sets of outgoing particles produced in the interactions between two incoming particles. The objective is to provide as accurate as possible a representation of event properties in a wide range of reactions, with emphasis on those where strong interactions play a role, directly or indirectly, and therefore multihadronic final states are produced. The physics is then not understood well enough to give an exact description; instead the program has to be based on a combination of analytical results and various QCD-based models. This physics input is summarized here, for areas such as hard subprocesses, initial- and final-state parton showers, beam remnants and underlying events, fragmentation and decays, and much more. Furthermore, extensive information is provided on all program elements: subroutines and functions, switches and parameters, and particle and process data. This should allow the user to tailor the generation task to the topics of interest., Comment: 8 + 454 pages

The PYTHIA program can be used to generate high-energy-physics `events', i.e. sets of outgoing particles produced in the interactions between two incoming particles. The objective is to provide as accurate as possible a representation of event properties in a wide range of reactions, with emphasis on those where strong interactions play a role, directly or indirectly, and therefore multihadronic final states are produced. The physics is then not understood well enough to give an exact description; instead the program has to be based on a combination of analytical results and various QCD-based models. This physics input is summarized here, for areas such as hard subprocesses, initial- and final-state parton showers, beam remnants and underlying events, fragmentation and decays, and much more. Furthermore, extensive information is provided on all program elements: subroutines and functions, switches and parameters, and particle and process data. This should allow the user to tailor the generation task to the topics of interest. The information in this edition of the manual refers to PYTHIA version 6.200, of 31 August 2001. The official reference to the latest published version is T. Sj\"ostrand, P. Ed\'en, C. Friberg, L. L\"onnblad, G. Miu, S. Mrenna and E. Norrbin, Computer Physics Commun. 135 (2001) 238., Comment: 6 + 419 pages

A `complete' framework for gamma-gamma / gamma*-gamma / gamma*-gamma* interactions is presented. The emphasis is on providing a model for gamma-gamma physics at all photon virtualities, including the difficult transition region around the rho meson mass., Comment: 4 pages, to appear in the Proceedings of the Linear Collider Workshop 2000, Fermilab, October 24-28, 2000

Recent improvements in the PYTHIA event generator are summarized: new hard subprocesses, gamma*-gamma* physics, QCD final-state showers, and more., Comment: 4 pages, to appear in the Proceedings of the Linear Collider Workshop 2000, Fermilab, October 24-28, 2000

An algorithm for an improved description of final-state QCD radiation is introduced. It is matched to the first-order matrix elements for gluon emission in a host of decays, for processes within the Standard Model and the Minimal Supersymmetric extension thereof., Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the Proceedings of the Linear Collider Workshop 2000, Fermilab, October 24-28, 2000