arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Marek Schönherr.
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.
Events with vector bosons produced in association with jets have been extensively studied at hadron colliders and provide high-accuracy tests of the Standard Model. A good understanding of these processes is of paramount importance for precision Higgs physics, as well as for searches for new physics. In particular, associated production of $γ$, $W$ or $Z$ bosons with light-flavor and heavy-flavor jets is a powerful tool for testing perturbative QCD calculations, Monte Carlo event generators, and can also constrain the parametrizations used to describe the parton content of the proton. Furthermore, events with a $W$ or $Z$ boson produced with two well-separated jets can be used to distinguish between electroweak and strong production mechanisms, and to set limits on contributions of physics beyond the Standard Model. This review summarises the historical theoretical developments and the state-of-the-art in the modeling of vector-boson-plus-jet physics, while focusing on experimental results by LHC collaborations in Run-1 and Run-2, and including comparisons with recent measurements at the Tevatron.
First, we present a combined analysis of ${\rm p}{\rm p} \to μ^+ ν_μ{\rm e}^- \bar ν_{\rm e}$ and ${\rm p}{\rm p} \to μ^+ ν_μ{\rm e}^- \bar ν_{\rm e} {\rm j}$ at next-to-leading order, including both QCD and electroweak corrections. Second, we provide all-order predictions for ${\rm p}{\rm p} \to μ^+ ν_μ{\rm e}^- \bar ν_{\rm p}+\mathrm{jets}$ using merged parton-shower simulations that also include approximate EW effects. A fully inclusive sample for WW production is compared to the fixed-order computations for exclusive zero- and one-jet selections. The various higher-order effects are studied in detail at the level of cross sections and differential distributions for realistic experimental set-ups. Our study confirms that merged predictions are significantly more stable than the fixed-order ones in particular regarding ratios between the two processes.
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.
We consider the associated production of a Higgs boson and a photon in weak boson fusion in the Standard Model (SM) and the Standard Model Effective Theory (SMEFT), with the Higgs boson decaying to a pair of bottom quarks. Analysing events in a cut-based analysis and with multivariate techniques we determine the sensitivity of this process to the bottom-Yukawa coupling in the SM and to possible CP-violation mediated by dimension-6 operators in the SMEFT.
Sherpa is a general-purpose Monte Carlo event generator for the simulation of particle collisions in high-energy collider experiments. We summarize essential features and improvements of the Sherpa 2.2 release series, which is heavily used for event generation in the analysis and interpretation of LHC Run 1 and Run 2 data. We highlight a decade of developments towards ever higher precision in the simulation of particle-collision events.
We present the evaluation of the complete set of NLO corrections to three-jet production at the LHC. To this end we consider all contributions of $\mathcal{O}(α_s^nα^m)$ with $n+m=3$ and $n+m=4$. This includes in particular also subleading Born contributions of electroweak origin, as well as electroweak virtual and QED real-radiative corrections. As an application we present results for the three- over two-jet ratio $R_{32}$. While the impact of non-QCD corrections on the total cross section is rather small, they can exceed $-10\%$ for high jet transverse momenta. The $R_{32}$ observable turns out to be very stable against electroweak corrections, receiving absolute corrections below $5\%$ even in the high-$p_T$ region.
In this proceedings I discuss the general strategy and impact of tuning Monte-Carlo event generators for physics processes involving top quarks. Special emphasis is put on disinguishing the different usages of event generators in the experiments and the subsequent implications on the tuning process. The current status of determining tune uncertainties is also discussed.
In this proceedings we compare phenomenological predictions for differential distributions in top-quark pair production at the LHC. In particular we consider NNLO QCD fixed-order predictions and parton-level predictions based on NLO QCD multi-jet merging following the MEPS@NLO scheme. In both predictions NLO electroweak (EW) corrections are incorporated in different approximations. We focus on several transverse-momentum distributions and on the top-quark invariant mass distribution, both highly relevant for the ongoing physics program at the LHC. We discuss comparisons between the different considered approximations and their advantages and disadvantages for different distributions.
We discuss the inclusion of next-to-next-to leading order electromagnetic and of next-to leading order electroweak corrections to the leptonic decays of weak gauge and Higgs bosons in the SHERPA event generator. To this end, we modify the Yennie-Frautschi-Suura scheme for the resummation of soft photon corrections and its systematic improvement with fixed-order calculations, to also include the effect of virtual corrections due to the ex- change of weak gauge bosons. We detail relevant technical aspects of our implementation and present numerical results for observables relevant for high-precision Drell-Yan and Higgs boson production and decay simula- tions at the LHC.
Triboson processes allow for a measurement of the triple and quartic couplings of the Standard Model gauge bosons, which can be used to constrain anomalous gauge couplings. In this paper we calculate the next-to-leading order electroweak corrections to fully off-shell $W^-W^+W^+$ production, namely the production of a $\ell_1^-\ell_2^+\ell_3^+\barν_{\ell_1}ν_{\ell_2}ν_{\ell_3}$ final state with ($\ell_i=e,μ$), including all triple, double, single and non resonant topologies and interferences of diagrams with all different vector boson ($W,Z,γ$) intermediate states. We find large cancellations of the electroweak correction to the $q\bar{q}$-induced channel, which includes the exchange of virtual electroweak gauge bosons, and photon-induced jet radiation processes. This accidental compensation is found to be strongly phase space and observable dependent. The resulting corrections in a suitably defined fiducial region thus amount to $-2.0\%$, but rise rapidly for other observables.
With Run-II of the LHC starting its final year of data-taking, high precision theoretical predictions through Monte-Carlo event generators whose uncertainties match that of the recorded data are of highest importance. This talk summarises the progress of the field and highlight a number of recent developments.
In this paper a complete generalisation of the Catani-Seymour dipole subtraction method to next-to-leading order electroweak calculations is presented. All singularities due to photon and gluon radiation off both massless and massive partons in the presence of both massless and massive spectators are accounted for. Particular attention is paid to the simultaneous subtraction of singularities of both QCD and electroweak origin which are present in the next-to-leading order corrections to processes with more than one perturbative order contributing at Born level. Similarly, embedding non-dipole-like photon splittings in the dipole subtraction scheme discussed. The implementation of the formulated subtraction scheme in the framework of the Sherpa Monte-Carlo event generator is detailed and numerous internal consistency checks validating the obtained results are presented.
We present theoretical predictions for the production of top-quark pairs in association with jets at the LHC including electroweak (EW) corrections. First, we present and compare differential predictions at the fixed-order level for $t \bar t$ and $t \bar t+$jet production at the LHC considering the dominant NLO EW corrections of order $\mathcal{O}(α_S^2 α)$ and $\mathcal{O}(α_S^3 α)$ respectively together with all additional subleading Born and one-loop contributions. The NLO EW corrections are enhanced at large energies and in particular alter the shape of the top transverse momentum distribution, whose reliable modelling is crucial for many searches for new physics at the energy frontier. Based on the fixed-order results we motivate an approximation of the EW corrections valid at the percent level, that allows us to readily incorporate the EW corrections in the MEPS@NLO framework of Sherpa combined with OpenLoops. Subsequently, we present multi-jet merged parton-level predictions for inclusive top-pair production incorporating NLO QCD+EW corrections to $t \bar t$ and $t \bar t+$jet. Finally, we compare at the particle-level against a recent 8 TeV measurement of the top transverse momentum distribution performed by ATLAS in the lepton+jet channel. We find very good agreement between the Monte Carlo prediction and the data when the EW corrections are included.
We present results at next-to-leading order accuracy in QCD for single top-quark production in the $t$, $s$ and $tW$ channels at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV, obtained with the SHERPA event generator. We find them in very good agreement with measured values and quantify their theory uncertainties. Uncertainties stemming from the choice between the four- and the five-flavour scheme are found to be typically of the order of 5-10 % over large ranges of phase space. We discuss the impact of parton distribution functions, and in particular of the bottom PDF. We also show how different cuts on QCD radiation patterns improve the signal-to-background ratio in realistic fiducial volumes.
Processes with three external electroweak gauge boson allow for a measurement of triple and quartic gauge couplings. They can be used to constrain anomalous gauge couplings, where new physics might predominantly couple to electroweak gauge bosons. In this paper we chose a class of such processes where we consider two photons and an additional vector boson in the final state. As additional vector boson we consider either a third photon or a $W$ or $Z$ boson. For the latter two cases we assume a leptonic decay of the boson. We calculate the next-to-leading order QCD and electroweak corrections to these processes with a particular emphasis on the until now unknown electroweak corrections. We find that the electroweak corrections to the total cross section are moderate in the range of a few per cent at most, but can reach several tens of per cent in regions of phase space that are particularly interesting in the context of new physics searches. In addition we investigate the difference between additive and multiplicative scheme when combining QCD and electroweak corrections and we assess the importance of photon induced contributions to these processes.
We present the implementation and validation of the techniques used to efficiently evaluate parametric and perturbative theoretical uncertainties in matrix-element plus parton-shower simulations within the Sherpa event-generator framework. By tracing the full $α_s$ and PDF dependences, including the parton-shower component, as well as the fixed-order scale uncertainties, we compute variational event weights on-the-fly, thereby greatly reducing the computational costs to obtain theoretical-uncertainty estimates.
In this contribution recent results regarding the NLO electroweak corrections for vector boson production in association with jets are presented. Besides discussing the phenomenology of the fixed-order results, their corporation in existing NLO QCD parton shower matched and merged calculations, which can directly be used in experimental analyses, will be shown.