Introduction to parton-shower event generators

This lecture discusses the physics implemented by Monte Carlo event generators for hadron colliders. It details the construction of parton showers and the matching of parton showers to fixed-order calculations at higher orders in perturbative QCD. It also discusses approaches to merge calculations for a varying number of jets, the interface to the underlying event and hadronization.Comment: 40 pages, 12 figures. Lectures presented at TASI 201

High-Energy-Physics Event Generation with PYTHIA 6.1

PYTHIA version 6 represents a merger of the PYTHIA 5, JETSET 7 and SPYTHIA programs, with many improvements. It 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. The underlying physics is not understood well enough to give an exact description; the programs therefore contain a combination of analytical results and various models. The emphasis in this article is on new aspects, but a few words of general introduction are included. Further documentation is available on the web.Comment: 1 + 27 pages, submitted to Computer Physics Communication

The categorical limit of a sequence of dynamical systems

Modeling a sequence of design steps, or a sequence of parameter settings, yields a sequence of dynamical systems. In many cases, such a sequence is intended to approximate a certain limit case. However, formally defining that limit turns out to be subject to ambiguity. Depending on the interpretation of the sequence, i.e. depending on how the behaviors of the systems in the sequence are related, it may vary what the limit should be. Topologies, and in particular metrics, define limits uniquely, if they exist. Thus they select one interpretation implicitly and leave no room for other interpretations. In this paper, we define limits using category theory, and use the mentioned relations between system behaviors explicitly. This resolves the problem of ambiguity in a more controlled way. We introduce a category of prefix orders on executions and partial history preserving maps between them to describe both discrete and continuous branching time dynamics. We prove that in this category all projective limits exist, and illustrate how ambiguity in the definition of limits is resolved using an example. Moreover, we show how various problems with known topological approaches are now resolved, and how the construction of projective limits enables us to approximate continuous time dynamics as a sequence of discrete time systems.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS 2013, arXiv:1307.690

Multiple Interactions and Beam Remnants

Open issues on the structure of multiple interactions are outlined. An improved model is summarized, with a new approach to correlated parton densities in flavour, colour, longitudinal and transverse momenta, for both hard-scattering partons and beam-remnant ones.Comment: LaTeX, 5 pages, submitted to the proceedings of the Workshop on Physics at TeV Colliders, Les Houches, France, 26 May - 6 June 200

Gaining analytic control of parton showers

Parton showers are widely used to generate fully exclusive final states needed to compare theoretical models to experimental observations. While, in general, parton showers give a good description of the experimental data, the precise functional form of the probability distribution underlying the event generation is generally not known. The reason is that realistic parton showers are required to conserve four-momentum at each vertex. In this paper we investigate in detail how four-momentum conservation is enforced in a standard parton shower and why this destroys the analytic control of the probability distribution. We show how to modify a parton shower algorithm such that it conserves four-momentum at each vertex, but for which the full analytic form of the probability distribution is known. We then comment how this analytic control can be used to match matrix element calculations with parton showers, and to estimate effects of power corrections and other uncertainties in parton showers.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, v2: final journal versio

QCD Radiation off Heavy Particles

We study QCD radiation in decay processes involving heavy particles. As input, the first-order gluon emission rate is calculated in a number of reactions, and comparisons of the energy flow patterns show a non-negligible process dependence. To proceed further, the QCD parton shower language offers a convenient approach to include multi-gluon emission effects, and to describe exclusive event properties. An existing shower algorithm is extended to take into account the process-dependent mass, spin and parity effects, as given by the matrix element calculations. This allows an improved description of multiple gluon emission effects off b and t quarks, and also off nonstandard particles like squarks and gluinos. Phenomenological applications are presented for bottom production at LEP, Higgs particle decay to heavy flavours, top production and decay at linear colliders, and some simple supersymmetric processes.Comment: 44 pages, 15 pages, 4 table

Progress on Multiple Interactions

We report on the development of a new model for the underlying event in hadron-hadron collisions. The model includes parton showers for all interactions, as well as non-trivial flavour, momentum, and colour correlations between interaction initiators and beam remnant partons.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of HEP 2003, 3p

A simple shower and matching algorithm

We present a simple formalism for parton-shower Markov chains. As a first step towards more complete uncertainty bands, we incorporate a comprehensive exploration of the ambiguities inherent in such calculations. To reduce this uncertainty, we then introduce a matching formalism which allows a generated event sample to simultaneously reproduce any infrared safe distribution calculated at leading or next-to-leading order in perturbation theory, up to sub-leading corrections. To enable a more universal definition of perturbative calculations, we also propose a more general definition of the hadronization cutoff. Finally, we present an implementation of some of these ideas for final-state gluon showers, in a code dubbed VINCIA.Comment: 32 pages, 6 figure