Recent developments in POWHEG

I review recent developments in POWHEG, a method for interfacing parton-shower generators with NLO QCD computations. I illustrate recent progress in understanding several features of the method, and in clarifying similarity and differences with respect to MC@NLO. Furthermore, I briefly describe a recently introduced framework, the POWHEG BOX, that allows the automatic POWHEG implementation of any given NLO calculation, and has been recently applied to Z+jet production and to Higgs production via vector-boson fusion.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Next-to-Leading-Order Corrections to the Production of Heavy-Flavour Jets in e+e- Collisions

In this paper we describe the calculation of the process e+e- -> Z/gamma -> QQbar + X, where Q is a heavy quark, at order alpha_s^2.Comment: 49 pages, Latex, epsfig, 6 figures. Tables 2 and 3 labels and captions have been fixe

On the Fragmentation Function for Heavy Quarks in e+e- collisions

We use a recent O(alpha_s^2) calculation of the differential cross section for the production of heavy quarks in e+e- annihilation to compute a few moments of the heavy quark single-inclusive production cross section. We verify that, contrary to some recent claims, the leading and next-to-leading logarithmic terms in this cross section are correctly given by the standard NLO fragmentation function formalism for heavy quark production.Comment: 14 pages, Latex, epsfig, 4 figure

QCD Predictions for Charm and Bottom Production at RHIC

We make up-to-date QCD predictions for open charm and bottom production at RHIC in nucleon-nucleon collisions at \sqrt{S} = 200 GeV. We also calculate the electron spectrum resulting from heavy flavor decays to allow direct comparison to the data. A rigorous benchmark, including the theoretical uncertainties, is established against which nuclear collision data can be compared to obtain evidence for nuclear effects.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Is There a Significant Excess in Bottom Hadroproduction at the Tevatron?

We discuss the excess in the hadroproduction of B mesons at the Tevatron. We show that an accurate use of up-to-date information on the B fragmentation function reduces the observed excess to an acceptable level. Possible implications for experimental results reporting bottom quark cross sections, also showing an excess with respect to next-to-leading order theoretical predictions, are discussed.Comment: 5 pages, Latex, 4 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

NLO Higgs boson production via gluon fusion matched with shower in POWHEG

We present a next-to-leading order calculation of Higgs boson production via gluon fusion interfaced to shower Monte Carlo programs, implemented according to the POWHEG method. A detailed comparison with MC@NLO and PYTHIA is carried out for several observables, for the Tevatron and LHC colliders. Comparisons with next-to-next-to-leading order results and with resummed ones are also presented.Comment: Version accepted for publication by JHEP. One more figure added to Sec 4.1.2 and two more explanatory figures and comments added to Sec 4.3 on p_T distribution

Heavy Flavour Production

We review the status of heavy flavour production in QCD. Comparison of experimental and theoretical results for top and bottom production are given. Selected topics in charm production are also discussed.Comment: 18 pages, Latex, epsfig, 12 tar-gzip-uuencoded figures. Invited talk given at the XV International conference "Physics in Collisions", Cracow, Poland, June 8-10, 199

The \pt spectrum of heavy quarks in photoproduction

We illustrate a formalism that allows to match the next-to-leading order cross section for the photoproduction of heavy quarks to the cross section obtained by resumming logarithms of \pt/m to the next-to-leading accuracy, thus giving a sensible prediction for any value of \pt. We present a comparison between our predictions and H1 and ZEUS data.Comment: 4 pages Latex; 3 figures included. Talk given at DIS01, 27 April - 1 May 2001, Bologna, Ital