QCD (&) Event Generators

Recent developments in QCD phenomenology have spurred on several improved approaches to Monte Carlo event generation, relative to the post--LEP state of the art. In this brief review, the emphasis is placed on approaches for 1) consistently merging fixed--order matrix element calculations with parton showers, 2) improving the parton shower algorithms themselves, and 3) improving the description of the underlying event in hadron collisions.Comment: Submitted to proceedings of DIS05, 12 page

Soft-QCD and UE spectra in pp collisions at very high CM energies (a Snowmass white paper)

We make some educated guesses for the extrapolations of typical soft-inclusive (minimum-bias, pileup, underlying-event) observables to proton-proton collisions at center-of-mass energies in the range 13 - 100 TeV. The numbers should be interpreted with (at least) a 10% uncertainty.Comment: 5 pages. Update (v2) adds numbers for 13 TeV and corrects bug in UE ET density estimate

A Quick Guide to SUSY Tools

The last decade has seen the emergence of a wide range of automated calculations for supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model. This guide contains a brief summary of these, with the main focus on hadron collider phenomenology, as well as a brief introduction to the so-called SUSY Les Houches Accord. See also the Les Houches Web Repository for BSM Tools: http://www.ippp.dur.ac.uk/montecarlo/BSM/Comment: 6 pages. Prepared for the TeV4LHC Physics Landscapes summary repor

Non-perturbative QCD Effects and the Top Mass at the Tevatron

The modelling of non-perturbative effects is an important part of modern collider physics simulations. In hadron collisions there is some indication that the modelling of the interactions of the beam remnants, the underlying event, may require non-trivial colour reconnection effects to be present. We recently introduced a universally applicable toy model of such reconnections, based on hadronising strings. This model, which has one free parameter, has been implemented in the Pythia event generator. We then considered several parameter sets (`tunes'), constrained by fits to Tevatron minimum-bias data, and determined the sensitivity of a simplified top mass analysis to these effects, in exclusive semi-leptonic top events at the Tevatron. A first attempt at isolating the genuine non-perturbative effects gave an estimate of order +-0.5GeV from non-perturbative uncertainties. The results presented here are an update to the original study and include recent bug fixes of Pythia that influenced the tunings investigated.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, Submitted to the Proceedings of Top2008, 18-24 May 2008, La Biodola, Isola d'Elba, Ital

Strange Particles and Neutron Stars - Experiments at Gsi

Experiments on strangeness production in nucleus-nucleus collisions at SIS energies address fundamental aspects of modern nuclear physics: the determination of the nuclear equation-of-state at high baryon densities and the properties of hadrons in dense nuclear matter. Experimental data and theoretical results will be reviewed. Future experiments at the FAIR accelerator aim at the exploration of the QCD phase diagram at highest baryon densities.Comment: %Invited talk given at the International Invited talk given at the International Symposium on Heavy Ion Physics (ISHIP 2006) April 3-6 2006, FIAS, Frankfurt, Germany Frankfurt, German

String Formation Beyond Leading Colour

We present a new model for the hadronisation of multi-parton systems, in which colour correlations beyond leading $N_C$ are allowed to influence the formation of confining potentials (strings). The multiplet structure of $SU(3)$ is combined with a minimisation of the string potential energy, to decide between which partons strings should form, allowing also for "baryonic" configurations (e.g., two colours can combine coherently to form an anticolour). In $e^+e^-$collisions, modifications to the leading-colour picture are small, suppressed by both colour and kinematics factors. But in $pp$ collisions, multi-parton interactions increase the number of possible subleading connections, counteracting their naive $1/N_C^2$ suppression. Moreover, those that reduce the overall string lengths are kinematically favoured. The model, which we have implemented in the PYTHIA 8 generator, is capable of reaching agreement not only with the important \left(n_\mathrm{charged}) distribution but also with measured rates (and ratios) of kaons and hyperons, in both $ee$ and $pp$ collisions. Nonetheless, the shape of their $p_\perp$ spectra remains challenging to explain.Comment: 48 pages, 22 figure

Genuinely sharp heat kernel estimates on compact rank-one symmetric spaces, for Jacobi expansions, on a ball and on a simplex

We prove genuinely sharp two-sided global estimates for heat kernels on all compact rank-one symmetric spaces. This generalizes the authors' recent result obtained for a Euclidean sphere of arbitrary dimension. Furthermore, similar heat kernel bounds are shown in the context of classical Jacobi expansions, on a ball and on a simplex. These results are more precise than the qualitatively sharp Gaussian estimates proved recently by several authors.Comment: 16 page