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Gavin P. Salam

Publications and source records attributed to Gavin P. Salam.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources
arXiv2008

Pileup subtraction using jet areas

One of the major challenges for the LHC will be to extract precise information from hadronic final states in the presence of the large number of additional soft pp collisions, pileup, that occur simultaneously with any hard interaction in high luminosity runs. We propose a novel technique, based on jet areas, that provides jet-by-jet corrections for pileup and underlying-event effects. It is data driven, does not depend on Monte Carlo modelling and can be used with any jet algorithm for which a jet area can be sensibly defined. We illustrate its effectiveness for some key processes and find that it can be applied also in the context of the Tevatron, low-luminosity LHC and LHC heavy-ion collisions.

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arXiv2008

Recent progress in defining and understanding jets

This talk reviews some key developments that have taken place in hadron-collider jet finding over the past couple of years, including: technical advances such as the complete formulation of an infrared safe seedless cone algorithm and fast computational approaches to sequential recombination jet finders like the kt algorithm, together with universal methods for subtracting pileup; progress in understanding the sensitivity of jet algorithms to the underlying event and hadronisation; and work that exploits our knowledge of QCD divergences to better define and predict heavy-flavour jet cross sections.

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arXiv2007

Non-perturbative QCD effects in jets at hadron colliders

We discuss non-perturbative QCD contributions to jet observables, computing their dependence on the jet radius R, and on the colour and transverse momentum of the parton initiating the jet. We show, using analytic QCD models of power corrections as well as Monte Carlo simulations, that hadronisation corrections grow at small values of R, behaving as 1/R, while underlying event contributions grow with the jet area as R^2. We highlight the connection between hadronisation corrections to jets and those for event shapes in e^+e^- and DIS; we note the limited dependence of our results on the choice of jet algorithm; finally, we propose several measurements in the context of which to test or implement our predictions. The results presented here reinforce the motivation for the use of a range of R values, as well as a plurality of infrared-safe jet algorithms, in precision jet studies at hadron colliders.

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arXiv2007

A Practical Seedless Infrared Safe Cone Algorithm

This writeup highlights the infrared unsafety of the "midpoint" cone jet-algorithm and provides a brief overview of why this is a serious issue. It then shows how one can build a safe (seedless) cone algorithm and discusses the potential impact on measurements.

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arXiv2007

Accurate QCD predictions for heavy-quark jets at the Tevatron and LHC

Heavy-quark jets are important in many of today's collider studies and searches, yet predictions for them are subject to much larger uncertainties than for light jets. This is because of strong enhancements in higher orders from large logarithms, ln(p_t/m_Q). We propose a new definition of heavy-quark jets, which is free of final-state logarithms to all orders and such that all initial-state collinear logarithms can be resummed into the heavy-quark parton distributions. Heavy-jet spectra can then be calculated in the massless approximation, which is simpler than a massive calculation and reduces the theoretical uncertainties by a factor of three. This provides the first ever accurate predictions for inclusive b- and c-jets, and the latter have significant discriminatory power for the intrinsic charm content of the proton. The techniques introduced here could be used to obtain heavy-flavour jet results from existing massless next-to-leading order calculations for a wide range of processes. We also discuss the experimental applicability of our flavoured jet definition.

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arXiv2007

A practical Seedless Infrared-Safe Cone jet algorithm

Current cone jet algorithms, widely used at hadron colliders, take event particles as seeds in an iterative search for stable cones. A longstanding infrared (IR) unsafety issue in such algorithms is often assumed to be solvable by adding extra `midpoint' seeds, but actually is just postponed to one order higher in the coupling. A proper solution is to switch to an exact seedless cone algorithm, one that provably identifies all stable cones. The only existing approach takes N 2^N time to find jets among N particles, making it unusable at hadron level. This can be reduced to N^2 ln(N) time, leading to code (SISCone) whose speed is similar to that of public midpoint implementations. Monte Carlo tests provide a strong cross-check of an analytical proof of the IR safety of the new algorithm, and the absence of any 'R_{sep}' issue implies a good practical correspondence between parton and hadron levels. Relative to a midpoint cone, the use of an IR safe seedless algorithm leads to modest changes for inclusive jet spectra, mostly through reduced sensitivity to the underlying event, and significant changes for some multi-jet observables.

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arXiv2006

Dispelling the N^3 myth for the Kt jet-finder

At high-energy colliders, jets of hadrons are the observable counterparts of the perturbative concepts of quarks and gluons. Good procedures for identifying jets are central to experimental analyses and comparisons with theory. The Kt family of successive recombination jet finders has been widely advocated because of its conceptual simplicity and flexibility and its unique ability to approximately reconstruct the partonic branching sequence in an event. Until now however, it had been believed that for an ensemble of N particles the algorithmic complexity of the Kt jet finder scaled as N^3, a severe issue in the high multiplicity environments of LHC and heavy-ion colliders. We here show that the computationally complex part of Kt jet-clustering can be reduced to two-dimensional nearest neighbour location for a dynamic set of points. Borrowing techniques developed for this extensively studied problem in computational geometry, Kt jet-finding can then be performed in N ln N time. Code based on these ideas is found to run faster than all other jet finders in current use.

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arXiv2006

Recent developments in perturbative QCD

A brief overview of some recently active topics in perturbative QCD, including: string-inspired recursion techniques at tree level; recursion approaches and automation of standard techniques for 1-loop calculations; the status of NNLO jet calculations; and non-trivial structures that appear in higher-order calculations.

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arXiv2006

Infrared safe definition of jet flavour

Though it is widely taken for granted that it makes sense to separately discuss quark and gluon jets, normal jet algorithms lead to a net parton-level jet flavour that is infrared (IR) unsafe. This writeup illustrates the problem and explains how the kt algorithm can be modified to provide an IR safe parton-level flavour. As well as being of use in theoretical calculations that require a projection of higher-order contributions onto a flavour-channel of the lowest order, jet-flavour algorithms also open up the prospect of significant improvements in the accuracy of heavy-quark jet predictions.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2006

Infrared safe definition of jet flavour

It is common, in both theoretical and experimental studies, to separately discuss quark and gluon jets. However, even at parton level, widely-used jet algorithms fail to provide an infrared safe way of making this distinction. We examine the origin of the problem, and propose a solution in terms of a new "flavour-kt" algorithm. As well as being of conceptual interest this can be a powerful tool when combining fixed-order calculations with multi-jet resummations and parton showers. It also has applications to studies of heavy-quark jets.

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arXiv2005

A posteriori inclusion of PDFs in NLO QCD final-state calculations

Any NLO calculation of a QCD final-state observable involves Monte Carlo integration over a large number of events. For DIS and hadron colliders this must usually be repeated for each new PDF set, making it impractical to consider many `error' PDF sets, or carry out PDF fits. Here we discuss ``a posteriori'' inclusion of PDFs, whereby the Monte Carlo run calculates a grid (in x and Q) of cross section weights that can subsequently be combined with an arbitrary PDF. The procedure is numerically equivalent to using an interpolated form of the PDF. The main novelty relative to prior work is the use of higher-order interpolation, which substantially improves the tradeoff between accuracy and memory use. An accuracy of about 0.01% has been reached for the single inclusive cross-section in the central rapidity region |y|<0.5 for jet transverse momenta from 100 to 5000 GeV. This method should facilitate the consistent inclusion of final-state data from HERA, Tevatron and LHC in PDF fits, thus helping to increase the sensitivity of LHC to deviations from standard Model predictions.

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arXiv2005

Developments in perturbative QCD

A brief review of key recent developments and ongoing projects in perturbative QCD theory, with emphasis on conceptual advances that have the potential for impact on LHC studies. Topics covered include: twistors and new recursive calculational techniques; automation of one-loop predictions; developments concerning NNLO calculations; the status of Monte Carlo event generators and progress in matching to fixed order; analytical resummation including the push to NNLL, automation and gap between jets processes; and progress in the understanding of saturation at small x.

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arXiv2005

Principles of general final-state resummation and automated implementation

Next-to-leading logarithmic final-state resummed predictions have traditionally been calculated, manually, separately for each observable. In this article we derive NLL resummed results for generic observables. We highlight and discuss the conditions that the observable should satisfy for the approach to be valid, in particular continuous globalness and recursive infrared and collinear safety. The resulting resummation formula is expressed in terms of certain well-defined characteristics of the observable. We have written a computer program, CAESAR, which, given a subroutine for an arbitrary observable, determines those characteristics, enabling full automation of a large class of final-state resummations, in a range of processes.

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arXiv2004

Resummed event shapes at hadron-hadron colliders

This article introduces definitions for a number of new event shapes and jet-rates in hadron-hadron dijet production. They are designed so as to be measurable in practice at the Tevatron and the LHC, and to be global so that they can be resummed with currently available techniques. We explain how to vary their sensitivity to beam fragmentation, limiting its impact for purely perturbative studies, or deliberately enhancing it so as to focus on non-perturbative effects. Explicit next-to-leading logarithmic resummed results are presented, as obtained with CAESAR.

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arXiv2004

CAESAR: Computer Automated Resummations

This talk gives a brief discussion of the motivations and principles behind computer automated expert semi-analytical resummation (CAESAR) for QCD final states.

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arXiv2004

Fall and rise of the gluon splitting function

This talk reviews some recent results on the NLL resummed small-x gluon splitting function, as determined including renormalisation-group improvements. It also discusses the observation that the LO, NLO, NNLO, etc. hierarchy for the gluon splitting function breaks down not when (alpha_s log 1/x) is of order one but rather for (alpha_s log^2 1/x) of order one.

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arXiv2004

The gluon splitting function at moderately small x

It is widely believed that at small x, the BFKL resummed gluon splitting function should grow as a power of 1/x. But in several recent calculations it has been found to decrease for moderately small-x before eventually rising. We show that this `dip' structure is a rigorous feature of the P_gg splitting function for sufficiently small alpha_s, the minimum occurring formally at ln 1/x of order 1/sqrt(alpha_s). We calculate the properties of the dip, including corrections of relative order sqrt(alpha_s), and discuss how this expansion in powers of sqrt(alpha_s), which is poorly convergent, can be qualitatively matched to the fully resummed result of a recent calculation, for realistic values of alpha_s. Finally, we note that the dip position, as a function of alpha_s, provides a lower bound in x below which the NNLO fixed-order expansion of the splitting function breaksdown and the resummation of small-x terms is mandatory.

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