Dual Identities inside the Gluon and the Graviton Scattering Amplitudes

Recently, Bern, Carrasco and Johansson conjectured dual identities inside the gluon tree scattering amplitudes. In this paper, we use the properties of the heterotic string and open string tree scattering amplitudes to refine and derive these dual identities. These identities can be carried over to loop amplitudes using the unitarity method. Furthermore, given the $M$-gluon (as well as gluon-gluino) tree amplitudes, $M$-graviton (as well as graviton-gravitino) tree scattering amplitudes can be written down immediately, avoiding the derivation of Feynman rules and the evaluation of Feynman diagrams for graviton scattering amplitudes.Comment: 43 pages, 3 figures; typos corrected, a few points clarified

Multi-gluon helicity amplitudes with one off-shell leg within high energy factorization

Basing on the Slavnov-Taylor identities, we derive a new prescription to obtain gauge invariant tree-level scattering amplitudes for the process g*g->Ng within high energy factorization. Using the helicity method, we check the formalism up to several final state gluons, and we present analytical formulas for the the helicity amplitudes for N=2. We also compare the method with Lipatov's effective action approach.Comment: 25 pages, quite a few figures, an appendix added, typos correcte

Cross Section Ratios between different CM energies at the LHC: opportunities for precision measurements and BSM sensitivity

The staged increase of the LHC beam energy provides a new class of interesting observables, namely ratios and double ratios of cross sections of various hard processes. The large degree of correlation of theoretical systematics in the cross section calculations at different energies leads to highly precise predictions for such ratios. We present in this letter few examples of such ratios, and discuss their possible implications, both in terms of opportunities for precision measurements and in terms of sensitivity to Beyond the Standard Model dynamics.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figure

Improving NLO-parton shower matched simulations with higher order matrix elements

In recent times the algorithms for the simulation of hadronic collisions have been subject to two substantial improvements: the inclusion, within parton showering, of exact higher order tree level matrix elements (MEPS) and, separately, next-to-leading order corrections (NLOPS). In this work we examine the key criteria to be met in merging the two approaches in such a way that the accuracy of both is preserved, in the framework of the POWHEG approach to NLOPS. We then ask to what extent these requirements may be fulfilled using existing simulations, without modifications. The result of this study is a pragmatic proposal for merging MEPS and NLOPS events to yield much improved MENLOPS event samples. We apply this method to W boson and top quark pair production. In both cases results for distributions within the remit of the NLO calculations exhibit no discernible changes with respect to the pure NLOPS prediction; conversely, those sensitive to the distribution of multiple hard jets assume, exactly, the form of the corresponding MEPS results.Comment: 38 pages, 17 figures. v2: added citations and brief discussion of related works, MENLOPS prescription localized in a subsection. v3: cited 4 more MEPS works in introduction

Boundary Contributions Using Fermion Pair Deformation

Continuing the study of boundary BCFW recursion relation of tree level amplitudes initiated in \cite{Feng:2009ei}, we consider boundary contributions coming from fermion pair deformation. We present the general strategy for these boundary contributions and demonstrate calculations using two examples, i.e, the standard QCD and deformed QCD with anomalous magnetic momentum coupling. As a by-product, we have extended BCFW recursion relation to off-shell gluon current, where because off-shell gluon current is not gauge invariant, a new feature must be cooperated.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figure

Discriminating Minimal SUGRA and Minimal Gauge Mediation Models at the Early LHC

Among various supersymmetric (SUSY) standard models, the gravity mediation model with a neutralino LSP and the gauge mediation model with a very light gravitino are attractive from the cosmological view point. These models have different scales of SUSY breaking and their underlying physics in high energy is quite different. However, if the sparticles' decay into the gravitino is prompt in the latter case, their collider signatures can be similar: multiple jets and missing transverse momentum. In this paper, we study the discrimination between these models in minimal cases at the LHC based on the method using the significance variables in several different modes and show the discrimination is possible at a very early stage after the discovery.Comment: 29 pages, 3 figures, captions improved, typos corrected, appendix added, version published in JHE

Complete Equivalence Between Gluon Tree Amplitudes in Twistor String Theory and in Gauge Theory

The gluon tree amplitudes of open twistor string theory, defined as contour integrals over the ACCK link variables, are shown to satisfy the BCFW relations, thus confirming that they coincide with the corresponding amplitudes in gauge field theory. In this approach, the integration contours are specified as encircling the zeros of certain constraint functions that force the appropriate relation between the link variables and the twistor string world-sheet variables. To do this, methods for calculating the tree amplitudes using link variables are developed further including diagrammatic methods for organizing and performing the calculations.Comment: 38 page

Matching Tree-Level Matrix Elements with Interleaved Showers

We present an implementation of the so-called CKKW-L merging scheme for combining multi-jet tree-level matrix elements with parton showers. The implementation uses the transverse-momentum-ordered shower with interleaved multiple interactions as implemented in PYTHIA8. We validate our procedure using e+e--annihilation into jets and vector boson production in hadronic collisions, with special attention to details in the algorithm which are formally sub-leading in character, but may have visible effects in some observables. We find substantial merging scale dependencies induced by the enforced rapidity ordering in the default PYTHIA8 shower. If this rapidity ordering is removed the merging scale dependence is almost negligible. We then also find that the shower does a surprisingly good job of describing the hardness of multi-jet events, as long as the hardest couple of jets are given by the matrix elements. The effects of using interleaved multiple interactions as compared to more simplistic ways of adding underlying-event effects in vector boson production are shown to be negligible except in a few sensitive observables. To illustrate the generality of our implementation, we also give some example results from di-boson production and pure QCD jet production in hadronic collisions.Comment: 44 pages, 23 figures, as published in JHEP, including all changes recommended by the refere

Sqrt{shat}_{min} resurrected

We discuss the use of the variable sqrt{shat}_{min}, which has been proposed in order to measure the hard scale of a multi parton final state event using inclusive quantities only, on a SUSY data sample for a 14 TeV LHC. In its original version, where this variable was proposed on calorimeter level, the direct correlation to the hard scattering scale does not survive when effects from soft physics are taken into account. We here show that when using reconstructed objects instead of calorimeter energy and momenta as input, we manage to actually recover this correlation for the parameter point considered here. We furthermore discuss the effect of including W + jets and t tbar+jets background in our analysis and the use of sqrt{shat}_{min} for the suppression of SM induced background in new physics searches.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures; v2: 1 figure, several subsections and references as well as new author affiliation added. Corresponds to published versio

Theoretical predictions for charm and bottom production at the LHC

We present predictions for a variety of single-inclusive observables that stem from the production of charm and bottom quark pairs at the 7 TeV LHC. They are obtained within the FONLL semi-analytical framework, and with two "Monte Carlo + NLO" approaches, MC@NLO and POWHEG. Results are given for final states and acceptance cuts that are as close as possible to those used by experimental collaborations and, where feasible, are compared to LHC data.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figure