The Black Book of Quantum Chromodynamics

The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) will serve as the energy frontier for high-energy physics for the next 20 years. The highlight of the LHC running so far has been the discovery of the Higgs boson, but the LHC programme has also consisted of the measurement of a myriad of other Standard Model processes, as well as searches for Beyond-the-Standard-Model physics, and the discrimination between possible new physics signatures and their Standard Model backgrounds. Essentially all of the physics processes at the LHC depend on quantum chromodynamics, or QCD, in the production, or in the decay stages, or in both. This book has been written as an advanced primer for physics at the LHC, providing a pedagogical guide for the calculation of QCD and Standard Model predictions, using state-of-the-art theoretical frameworks. The predictions are compared to both the legacy data from the Tevatron, as well as the data obtained thus far from the LHC, with intuitive connections between data and theory supplied where possible. The book is written at a level suitable for advanced graduate students, and thus could be used in a graduate course, but is also intended for every physicist interested in physics at the LHC

The Black Book of Quantum Chromodynamics

The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) will serve as the energy frontier for high-energy physics for the next 20 years. The highlight of the LHC running so far has been the discovery of the Higgs boson, but the LHC programme has also consisted of the measurement of a myriad of other Standard Model processes, as well as searches for Beyond-the-Standard-Model physics, and the discrimination between possible new physics signatures and their Standard Model backgrounds. Essentially all of the physics processes at the LHC depend on quantum chromodynamics, or QCD, in the production, or in the decay stages, or in both. This book has been written as an advanced primer for physics at the LHC, providing a pedagogical guide for the calculation of QCD and Standard Model predictions, using state-of-the-art theoretical frameworks. The predictions are compared to both the legacy data from the Tevatron, as well as the data obtained thus far from the LHC, with intuitive connections between data and theory supplied where possible. The book is written at a level suitable for advanced graduate students, and thus could be used in a graduate course, but is also intended for every physicist interested in physics at the LHC

Stability of NLO Global Analysis and Implications for Hadron Collider Physics

The phenomenology of Standard Model and New Physics at hadron colliders depends critically on results from global QCD analysis for parton distribution functions (PDFs). The accuracy of the standard next-to-leading-order (NLO) global analysis, nominally a few percent, is generally well matched to the expected experimental precision. However, serious questions have been raised recently about the stability of the NLO analysis with respect to certain inputs, including the choice of kinematic cuts on the data sets and the parametrization of the gluon distribution. In this paper, we investigate this stability issue systematically within the CTEQ framework. We find that both the PDFs and their physical predictions are stable, well within the few percent level. Further, we have applied the Lagrange Multiplier method to explore the stability of the predicted cross sections for W production at the Tevatron and the LHC, since W production is often proposed as a standard candle for these colliders. We find the NLO predictions on sigma_W to be stable well within their previously-estimated uncertainty ranges.Comment: 24 pages, 11 figures. Minor changes in response to JHEP referee repor

Progress in CTEQ-TEA PDF analysis

Recent developments in the CTEQ-TEA global QCD analysis are presented. The parton distribution functions CT10-NNLO are described, constructed by comparing data from many experiments to NNLO approximations of QCD.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; contribution to the Proceedings of the XX Workshop on Deep Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects, Bonn, Germany, 26-30 March, 201

CTEQ-TEA parton distribution functions with intrinsic charm

The possibility of a (sizable) nonperturbative contribution to the charm parton distribution function (PDF) in a nucleon is investigated together with theoretical issues arising in its interpretation. Results from the global PDF analysis are presented. The separation of the universal component of the nonperturbative charm from the rest of the radiative contributions is discussed and the potential impact of a nonperturbative charm PDF on LHC scattering processes is illustrated. An estimate of nonperturbative charm magnitude in the CT14 and CT14HERA2 global QCD analyses at the next-to-next-to leading order (NNLO) in the QCD coupling strength is given by including the latest experimental data from HERA and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A comparison between different models of intrinsic charm is shown and prospects for standard candle observables at the LHC are illustrated.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures. Conference Proceedings of CIPANP2018, 13th Conference on the Intersections of Particle and Nuclear Physics, May 29 - June 3, 2018 Palm Springs, CA. Based on arXiv: 1707.00657, published in JHEP 1802 (2018) 05