Time Dependent Hadronization via HERMES and EMC Data Consistency

Using QCD-inspired time dependent cross sections for pre-hadrons we provide a combined analysis of available experimental data on hadron attenuation in DIS off nuclei as measured by HERMES with 12 and 27 GeV and by EMC with 100 and 280 GeV lepton beam energies. We extract the complete four-dimensional evolution of the pre-hadrons using the JETSET-part of PYTHIA. We find a remarkable sensitivity of nuclear attenuation data to the details of the time-evolution of cross sections. Only cross sections evolving linearly in time describe the available data in a wide kinematical regime. Predictions for experimental conditions at JLAB (5 and 12 GeV beam energies) are included.Comment: version as publishe

Improved Parton Showers at Large Transverse Momenta

Several methods to improve the parton-shower description of hard processes by an injection of matrix-element-based information have been presented over the years. In this article we study (re)weighting schemes for the first/hardest emission. One objective is to provide a consistent matching of the POWHEG next-to-leading order generator to the Pythia shower algorithms. Another is to correct the default behaviour of these showers at large transverse momenta, based on a comparison with real-emission matrix elements

Hadron formation and attenuation in deep inelastic lepton scattering off nuclei

We investigate hadron formation in deep inelastic lepton scattering on N, Kr and Xe nuclei in the kinematic regime of the HERMES experiment. The elementary electron-nucleon interaction is described within the event generator PYTHIA while a full coupled-channel treatment of the final state interactions is included by means of a BUU transport model. We find a good agreement with the measured charged hadron multiplicity ratio $R_M^h$ for N and Kr targets by accounting for the deceleration and absorption of the primarily produced particles as well as for the creation of secondary hadrons in the final state interactions.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures; revised and extended version, accepted for publication in Phys. Lett.

Radial flow afterburner for event generators and the baryon puzzle

A simple afterburner including radial flow to the randomized transverse momentum obtained from event generators, Pythia and Hijing, has been implemented to calculate the $p/\pi$ ratios and compare them with available data. A coherent trend of qualitative agreement has been obtained in $pp$ collisions and in $Au+Au$ for various centralities. Those results indicate that the radial flow does play an important role in the so called baryon puzzle anomaly.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures. To appear in Journal of Physics

Modified Signals for Supersymmetry in the NMSSM with a Singlino-like LSP

In the framework of the NMSSM with a singlino-like LSP, we study quantitatively the impact of the additional bino -> singlino cascade on the efficiencies in several search channels for supersymmetry of the ATLAS and CMS collaborations. Compared to the MSSM, the additional cascade reduces the missing transverse energy, but leads to additional jets or leptons. For the NMSSM benchmark lines which generalize cMSSM benchmark points, the efficiencies in the most relevant 2/3 jet + missing energy search channels can drop by factors ~1/3 to ~1/7, and can reduce the present lower bounds on M_{1/2} by as much as ~0.9 - 0.75 in the NMSSM for large bino-singlino mass differences. The larger efficiencies in multijet or multilepton search channels are not strong enough to affect this conclusion. In the fully constrained cNMSSM, sparticle decay cascades via the lightest stau can lead to signal cross sections in multilepton and 2tau search channels which are potentially visible at the LHC with 7 TeV center of mass energy.Comment: 24 pages, 9 Figures, misprint in Table 1 correcre

Open charm production at HERA

Inclusive charm meson production cross sections in the deep inelastic scattering and photoproduction regimes are compared with QCD leading and next-to-leading (NLO) calculations. The NLO predictions are significantly below the data in some parts of the measured kinematic range. Angular distributions of dijet events with charm show clear evidence for the existence of charm originating from the incoming photon. The charm fragmentation function is measured for the first time at HERA. Various fragmentation ratios and the fragmentation fractions of the low-lying charm hadrons are determined and compared to previous e+e- results.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the International Conference on the Structure and Interactions of the Photon, Frascati (Italy), 7-11 April 200

Using gamma+jets Production to Calibrate the Standard Model Z(nunu)+jets Background to New Physics Processes at the LHC

The irreducible background from Z(nunu)+jets, to beyond the Standard Model searches at the LHC, can be calibrated using gamma+jets data. The method utilises the fact that at high vector boson pT, the event kinematics are the same for the two processes and the cross sections differ mainly due to the boson-quark couplings. The method relies on a precise prediction from theory of the Z/gamma cross section ratio at high pT, which should be insensitive to effects from full event simulation. We study the Z/gamma ratio for final states involving 1, 2 and 3 hadronic jets, using both the leading-order parton shower Monte Carlo program Pythia8 and a leading-order matrix element program Gambos. This enables us both to understand the underlying parton dynamics in both processes, and to quantify the theoretical systematic uncertainties in the ratio predictions. Using a typical set of experimental cuts, we estimate the net theoretical uncertainty in the ratio to be of order 7%, when obtained from a Monte Carlo program using multiparton matrix-elements for the hard process. Uncertainties associated with full event simulation are found to be small. The results indicate that an overall accuracy of the method, excluding statistical errors, of order 10% should be possible.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figures; Accepted for publication by JHE

PYTHIA 6.4 Physics and Manual

The PYTHIA program 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, within and beyond the Standard Model, with emphasis on those where strong interactions play a role, directly or indirectly, and therefore multihadronic final states are produced. The physics is then not understood well enough to give an exact description; instead the program has to be based on a combination of analytical results and various QCD-based models. This physics input is summarized here, for areas such as hard subprocesses, initial- and final-state parton showers, underlying events and beam remnants, fragmentation and decays, and much more. Furthermore, extensive information is provided on all program elements: subroutines and functions, switches and parameters, and particle and process data. This should allow the user to tailor the generation task to the topics of interest.Comment: 576 pages, no figures, uses JHEP3.cls. The code and further information may be found on the PYTHIA web page: http://www.thep.lu.se/~torbjorn/Pythia.html Changes in version 2: Mistakenly deleted section heading for "Physics Processes" reinserted, affecting section numbering. Minor updates to take into account referee comments and new colour reconnection option

Quaero@H1: An Interface to High-pT HERA Event Data

Distributions from high-pT HERA event data analyzed in a general search for new physics at H1 have been incorporated into Quaero, an algorithm designed to automate tests of specific hypotheses with high energy collider data. The use of Quaero@H1 to search for leptoquarks, R-parity violating supersymmetry, and excited quarks provides examples to develop intuition for the algorithm's performance.Comment: Submitted to Eur. Phys. J.

Discovering the constrained NMSSM with tau leptons at the LHC

The constrained Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (cNMSSM) with mSugra-like boundary conditions at the GUT scale implies a singlino-like LSP with a mass just a few GeV below a stau NLSP. Hence, most of the squark/gluino decay cascades contain two tau leptons. The gluino mass >~ 1.2 TeV is somewhat larger than the squark masses of >~ 1 TeV. We simulate signal and background events for such a scenario at the LHC, and propose cuts on the transverse momenta of two jets, the missing transverse energy and the transverse momentum of a hadronically decaying tau lepton. This dedicated analysis allows to improve on the results of generic supersymmetry searches for a large part of the parameter space of the cNMSSM. The distribution of the effective mass and the signal rate provide sensitivity to distinguish the cNMSSM from the constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model in the stau-coannihilation region.Comment: 18 pages, 3 Figure