arXiv subjects

Alexander Puck Neuwirth

Publications and source records attributed to Alexander Puck Neuwirth.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Photon Fragmentation Functions in LHAPDF: Existing Sets and a Pythia-Based Extraction

Prompt-photon predictions with experimentally relevant isolation criteria retain a residual dependence on parton-to-photon fragmentation functions, whose phenomenological uncertainties remain only weakly constrained. We present a pragmatic study of photon fragmentation functions extracted from Pythia parton-shower events and stored in LHAPDF grids. We briefly review the role of photon fragmentation in perturbative QCD and then construct shower-level estimates of the flavour-dependent functions $D^{\mathrm{PS}}_{\gamma/i}(z,\mu_D)$ as functions of the photon momentum fraction $z$ and fragmentation scale $\mu_D$. The extracted distributions show the expected qualitative hierarchy between quark and gluon channels and an increasing fragmentation contribution with scale. In parallel, we convert the commonly used BFG, GRV, and GDRG parameterizations into LHAPDF grids and study their interpolation. We find that the default logcubic interpolation in LHAPDF reproduces the non-trivial $z$- and scale-dependence of the tabulated fragmentation functions more faithfully than the linear interpolation commonly used in legacy implementations. We also define a simple collider-oriented envelope set, based on the BFG and GRV families. These results provide a portable baseline for future phenomenological studies and for more systematic extractions of photon fragmentation functions.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2026

pylhe: A Lightweight Python interface to Les Houches Event files

Les Houches Event files are a standard format for Monte Carlo event generators in high-energy physics. pylhe is a lightweight pure-Python library for reading and writing LHE event data. It supports .lhe and compressed .lhe.gz files, implements the widely used LHE 3.0 features including multiple event weights and generator metadata, and also supports the recent HDF5-based LHEH5 format. By exposing events through a pythonic iterator and shared data structures, pylhe enables memory-efficient processing of large event samples without loading entire files into memory. The library also supports format conversion and integration with modern analysis workflows, including columnar analysis with Awkward Array and downstream machine-learning applications.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2025

Conversion of photons to dileptons in the Kroll-Wada and parton shower approaches

The study of dileptons in high-energy heavy-ion collisions provides critical insights into the properties of the quark-gluon plasma and the thermal radiation emitted throughout its evolution. In the low-mass region, dileptons originate from both direct photon conversion and hadronic decays, with the Kroll-Wada equation traditionally used to relate direct real and direct virtual photon production. In this work, we explore the possibility of using parton shower event generators to model this conversion process, leveraging their unitary treatment of internal photon conversions that naturally preserves normalisation, as well as their ability to incorporate higher-order corrections, recoil kinematics, and realistic experimental selection criteria. We compare the Kroll-Wada approach to simulations using the Pythia8 simple shower, the Vincia sector shower, and the POWHEG shower matched NLO event generator. Our results reveal that the parton shower approach offers improved accuracy in describing the dilepton spectrum, particularly towards larger invariant masses where phase-space suppression effects become relevant.

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arXiv2024

Combination and Reinterpretation of LHC SUSY Searches

To maximise the information obtained from various independent new physics searches conducted at the LHC, it is imperative to consider the combination of multiple analyses. To showcase the exclusion power gained by combining signal regions from different searches, we consider a simplified scenario inspired by supersymmetry, with all particles but one squark flavour and a bino-like neutralino decoupled. The corresponding signal therefore comprises strong squark pair production, associated squark-neutralino production, as well as weak neutralino pair production. We find that considering the associated and strong production mechanisms together significantly impacts mass limits, while contributions from the weak production are insignificant in the context of current exclusion limits. In addition, we demonstrate that the combination of uncorrelated signal regions as assessed from the recent TACO approach substantially pushes exclusion limits towards higher masses, relative to the bounds derived from the most sensitive individual analyses.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2024

Di-electron production at the LHC: Unravelling virtual-photon and heavy-flavour contributions

The production of virtual photons is a very sensitive probe of the properties of the quark-gluon plasma. As they are experimentally detected by lepton pairs, they suffer from a large background arising from hadron decays. Light-flavour hadrons dominate at low invariant masses below $m_{ee}\sim0.5$ GeV and heavy flavours above. These contributions must therefore also be taken into account in experimental analyses at the LHC. In this paper, we calculate the direct contribution from virtual photons produced in the Drell-Yan process with an additional jet in POWHEG and find that it is significant at low invariant masses. We also simulate the background contributions from $c\bar c$ and $b \bar b$ production with POWHEG and quantify the theoretical uncertainties due to variations of the perturbative scales and parton distribution functions. We find larger relative and absolute uncertainties for the lighter $c$ quarks than for heavier $b$ quarks.

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