In this article we describe Professor, a new program for tuning model parameters of Monte Carlo event generators to experimental data by parameterising the per-bin generator response to parameter variations and numerically optimising the parameterised behaviour. Simulated experimental analysis data is obtained using the Rivet analysis toolkit. This paper presents the Professor procedure and implementation, illustrated with the application of the method to tunes of the Pythia 6 event generator to data from the LEP/SLD and Tevatron experiments. These tunes are substantial improvements on existing standard choices, and are recommended as base tunes for LHC experiments, to be themselves systematically improved upon when early LHC data is available.
In this article we present an event generator based on the Monte Carlo program Powheg in combination with the matrix-element generator Recola. We apply it to compute NLO electroweak corrections to same-sign W-boson scattering, which have been shown to be large at the LHC. The event generator allows for the generation of unweighted events including the effect of the NLO electroweak corrections matched to a QED parton shower and interfaced to a QCD parton shower. In view of the expected experimental precision of future measurements, the use of such a tool will be indispensable.
The EtabFDC is a matrix-element event generator package for $η_b$ hadroproduction at LHC. It generates $pp\toη_b X$ events for all possible parton-level $2\to2$ leading-order processes with three commonly used $η_b$ decay channels being implemented. The \pythia interface is used for parton-shower and hadronization to obtain the hadronic events. The FORTRAN codes of this package are generated by FDC (Feynman Diagram Calculation) system automatically.
At the LHC era, the detector systems are operating at the harsh hadronic environment with the unprecedentedly high particle flux. Position sensitive silicon devices are usually positioned at the innermost regions of the experimental setups and must cope with highly non-uniform radiation fields. At the end of LHC Run II, fluence in silicon trackers reached 10$^{15}$ n$_{eq}$/cm$^2$. Initial simulation studies predict that the maximal fluence for the HL-LHC may be up to two orders of magnitude higher than the one seen in LHC Run I and Run II. In this paper, two general-purpose physics events gen…
We compare Monte Carlo event generators dedicated to simulating the production and decay of extra-dimensional black holes at the Large Hadron Collider.
DJpsiFDC is an event generator package for the process $gg\to J/ψJ/ψ$. It generates events for primary leading-order $2\to 2$ processes. The package could generate a LHE document and this document could easily be embedded into detector simulation software frameworks. The package is produced in Fortran codes.
We review the main software and computing challenges for the Monte Carlo physics event generators used by the LHC experiments, in view of the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) physics programme. This paper has been prepared by the HEP Software Foundation (HSF) Physics Event Generator Working Group as an input to the LHCC review of HL-LHC computing, which has started in May 2020.
We review the main features of Monte Carlo generators for top quark phenomenology and present some results for t-tbar and single-top signals and backgrounds at the LHC.
At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most abundant processes which take place in proton-proton collisions are the generation of multijet events. These final states rely heavily on phenomenological models and perturbative corrections which are not fully understood, and yet for many physics searches at the LHC, multijet processes are an important background to deal with. It is therefore imperative that the modelling of multijet processes is better understood and improved. For this reason, a study has been done with several state-of-the-art Monte Carlo event generators, and their predictions a…
This paper has been prepared by the HEP Software Foundation (HSF) Physics Event Generator Working Group (WG), as an input to the second phase of the LHCC review of High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) computing, which is due to take place in November 2021. It complements previous documents prepared by the WG in the context of the first phase of the LHCC review in 2020, including in particular the WG paper on the specific challenges in Monte Carlo event generator software for HL-LHC, which has since been updated and published, and which we are also submitting to the November 2021 review as an integral …
In this contribution the new event generation framework Sherpa will be presented. It aims at the full simulation of events at current and future high-energy experiments, in particular the LHC. Some results related to the production of jets at the Tevatron will be discussed.
I briefly discuss some theoretical aspects of top mass measurements at the LHC. In particular, I illustrate a recent theoretical study performed using next-to-leading order (NLO) calculations interfaced to shower generators (NLO+PS) of increasing accuracy, interfaced to both Pythia8 and Herwig7 Monte Carlo generators.
We summarise the motivation for, and the status of, the tools developed by CEDAR/MCnet for validating and tuning Monte Carlo event generators for the LHC against data from previous colliders. We then present selected preliminary results from studies of event shapes and hadronisation observables from e+e- colliders, and of minimum bias and underlying event observables from the Tevatron, and comment on the approach needed with early LHC data to best exploit the potential for new physics discoveries at the LHC in the next few years.
The status of two Monte Carlo generators, HELAC-PHEGAS, a program for multi-jet processes and VBFNLO, a parton level program for vector boson fusion processes at NLO QCD, is briefly presented. The aim of these tools is the simulation of events within the Standard Model at current and future high energy experiments, in particular the LHC. Some results related to the production of multi-jet final states at the LHC are also shown.
We review the physics basis, main features and use of general-purpose Monte Carlo event generators for the simulation of proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. Topics included are: the generation of hard-scattering matrix elements for processes of interest, at both leading and next-to-leading QCD perturbative order; their matching to approximate treatments of higher orders based on the showering approximation; the parton and dipole shower formulations; parton distribution functions for event generators; non-perturbative aspects such as soft QCD collisions, the underlying event …
This paper is a follow-up of Ref.~\cite{Ravasio:2018lzi}, where we studied the impact of next-to-leading order calculations merged with parton shower generators (NLO+PS) of increasing accuracy in the extraction of the top mass at hadron colliders. Here we examined results obtained with the older (fortran-based) shower generators Pythia6.4 and Herwig6.5. Our findings are in line with what we found in our previous paper with the new, c++-based, generators Pythia8.2 and Herwig7.1.
We investigate how a Generative Adversarial Network could be used to generate a list of particle four-momenta from LHC proton collisions, allowing one to define a generative model that could abstract from the irregularities of typical detector geometries. As an example of application, we show how such an architecture could be used as a generator of LHC parasitic collisions (pileup). We present two approaches to generate the events: unconditional generator and generator conditioned on missing transverse energy. We assess generation performances in a realistic LHC data-analysis environment, with…
LHC already probed and excluded half of the parameter space of the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model allowed by previous experiments. Only about 0.3% of the CMSSM parameter space survives. This fraction rises to about 0.9% if the bound on the Higgs mass can be circumvented.
A Monte Carlo event generator is constructed for a two-Higgs-doublet model with maximal CP symmetry, the MCPM. The model contains five physical Higgs bosons; the $ρ'$, behaving similarly to the standard-model Higgs boson, two extra neutral bosons $h'$ and $h"$, and a charged pair $H^\pm$. The special feature of the MCPM is that, concerning the Yukawa couplings, the bosons $h'$, $h"$ and $H^\pm$ couple directly only to the second generation fermions but with strengths given by the third-generation-fermion masses. Our event generator allows the simulation of the Drell-Yan-type production process…
In this paper we present a comparative study between PYTHIA, EPOS, QGSJET, and SIBYLL generators. The global event observables considered are the charged energy flow, charged-particle distributions, charged-hadron production ratios and $V^{0}$ ratios. The study is performed in the LHCb and TOTEM fiducial phase-spaces on minimum bias simulated data samples for \emph{pp} collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 7$ TeV using reference measurements from the aforementioned experiments. In the majority of cases, the measurements are within a band defined by the most extreme predictions. The observed differences be…
PHASE is a Monte Carlo event generator, under construction, for all Standard Model processes with six fermions in the final state at the LHC. It employs the full set of tree level Feynman diagrams, taking into account fermion masses for b quarks. The program can generate unweighted events for any subset of all six fermion final states in a single run, by making use of dedicated pre-samples. An interface to hadronization is provided.
Monte Carlo Event Generators are important tools for the understanding of physics at particle colliders like the LHC. In order to best predict a wide variety of observables, the optimization of parameters in the Event Generators based on precision data is crucial. However, the simultaneous optimization of many parameters is computationally challenging. We present an algorithm that allows to tune Monte Carlo Event Generators for high dimensional parameter spaces. To achieve this we first split the parameter space algorithmically in subspaces and perform a Professor tuning on the subspaces with …
The parameters tuning of event generators is a research topic characterized by complex choices: the generator response to parameter variations is difficult to obtain on a theoretical basis, and numerical methods are hardly tractable due to the long computational times required by generators. Event generator tuning has been tackled by parametrisation-based techniques, with the most successful one being a polynomial parametrisation. In this work, an implementation of tuning procedures based on artificial neural networks is proposed. The implementation was tested with closure testing and experime…
Apprentice is a tool developed for event generator tuning. It contains a range of conceptual improvements and extensions over the tuning tool Professor. Its core functionality remains the construction of a multivariate analytic surrogate model to computationally expensive Monte-Carlo event generator predictions. The surrogate model is used for numerical optimization in chi-square minimization and likelihood evaluation. Apprentice also introduces algorithms to automate the selection of observable weights to minimize the effect of mis-modeling in the event generators. We illustrate our improveme…
One Generator, Any Process: LLM-Conditioning for the LHC
Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Heidelberg（海德堡大学理论物理研究所）；Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR), Universität Heidelberg（海德堡大学交叉科学计算中心）
Data analyses in hadron collider physics depend on background simulations performed by Monte Carlo (MC) event generators. However, calculational limitations and non-perturbative effects require approximate models with adjustable parameters. In fact, we need to simultaneously tune many phenomenological parameters in a high-dimensional parameter-space in order to make the MC generator predictions fit the data. It is desirable to achieve this goal without spending too much time or computing resources iterating parameter settings and comparing the same set of plots over and over again. We present …
In this paper we study the theoretical uncertainties in the determination of the top-quark mass using next-to-leading-order (NLO) generators interfaced to parton showers (PS) that have different levels of accuracy. Specifically we consider three generators: one that implements NLO corrections in the production dynamics, one that includes also NLO corrections in top decay in the narrow width approximation, and one that implements NLO corrections for both production and decay including finite-width and interference effects. Since our aim is to provide an assessment of the uncertainties of purely…
We present a new Fortran Monte Carlo generator to simulate black hole events at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. The generator interfaces to the PYTHIA Monte Carlo fragmentation code. The physics of the BH generator includes, but not limited to, inelasticity effects, exact field emissivities, corrections to semiclassical black hole evaporation and gravitational energy loss at formation. These features are essential to realistically reconstruct the detector response and test different models of black hole formation and decay at the LHC.
As the LHC moves to higher energies and luminosity, the demand for computing resources increases accordingly and will soon outpace the growth of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid. To meet this greater demand, event generation Monte Carlo was targeted for adaptation to run on Mira, the supercomputer at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility. Alpgen is a Monte Carlo event generation application that is used by LHC experiments in the simulation of collisions that take place in the Large Hadron Collider. This paper details the process by which Alpgen was adapted from a single-processor serial-ap…
PHASE is a new event generator dedicated to the study of Standard Model processes with six fermions in the final state at the LHC. The code is intended for analyses of vector boson scattering, Higgs search, three gauge boson production, and top physics. This first version of the program describes final states characterized by the presence of one neutrino, $pp\to 4q +lν_l$, at O($α^6$). PHASE is based on a new iterative-adaptive multichannel technique, and employs exact leading order matrix elements. The code can generate unweighted events for any subset of all available final states. The produ…
The strangeness enhancement signature of QGP formation at LHC energies is carefully tackled in the present study. Based on HRG, the particle ratios of mainly strange and multi-strange particles are studied at energies from lower $\sqrt{s}\sim $ 0.001 up to 13 TeV. The strangeness enhancement clearly appeared at more higher energies, and the ratios are confronted to the available experimental data. The particle ratios are also studied using the Cosmic Ray Monte Carlo (CRMC) interface model with its two different event generators namely; EPOS $1.99$ and EPOSlhc which show a good agreement with t…
The heavy ion event generator HYDJET++ is presented. HYDJET++ simulates relativistic heavy ion AA collisions as a superposition of the soft, hydro-type state and the hard state resulting from multi-parton fragmentation. This model is the development and continuation of HYDJET event generator. The hard parts of HYDJET and HYDJET++ are identical. The soft part of HYDJET++ contains the following important additional features as compared with HYDJET: resonance decays and more detailed treatment of thermal and chemical freeze-out hypersurfaces. HYDJET++ is capable of reproducing the bulk properties…
We study the theoretical uncertainties in the determination of the top-quark mass using next-to-leading-order (NLO) generators, that describe the top-quark decay at different levels of accuracy, interfaced to parton showers (PS). Specifically we consider one generator that implements NLO corrections only in the production dynamics, one that also takes them into account in the top-quark decay in the narrow width approximation (NWA) and one that implements them exactly, including finite-width and interference effects. We aim at assessing the errors in top-mass determinations of purely theoretica…
The recent developments on PYQUEN, HYDJET and HYDJET++ event generators are presented. The partonic energy loss model PYQUEN is implemented as the modification of the "standard" jet event obtained with the generator of hadron-hadron interactions PYTHIA. HYDJET and HYDJET++ are the Monte-Carlo event generators for the simulation of relativistic heavy ion AA collisions considered as a superposition of the soft, hydro-type state and the hard, multi-parton fragmentation. HYDJET++ model is the development and continuation of HYDJET generator, and it includes more detailed treatment of the "thermal"…
Charged lepton transverse momenta in the Drell-Yan processes play an important role at the LHC in precision measurements of the Standard Model parameters, such as the W-boson mass and width, their charge asymmetries and sin^2(theta_W). Therefore, their distributions should be described as accurate as possible by the Monte Carlo event generators. In this paper we discuss the problem of matching the hard-process kinematics of the Monte Carlo generator WINHAC with the parton-shower kinematics of the PYTHIA 6.4 generator while interfacing these two programs. We show that improper assignment of the…
The recent discovery of a 125 GeV Higgs-like resonance at LHC, coupled with the lack of evidence for weak scale supersymmetry (SUSY), have severely constrained SUSY models such as mSUGRA/CMSSM. As LHC probes deeper into SUSY model parameter space, the little hierarchy problem -- how to reconcile the Z and Higgs boson mass scale with the scale of SUSY breaking -- will become increasingly exacerbated unless a sparticle signal is found. We evaluate two different measures of fine-tuning in the mSUGRA/CMSSM model. The more stringent of these, Δ_{HS}, includes effects that arise from the high scale …
We present an extension of the JHUGen and MELA framework, which includes an event generator and library for the matrix element analysis. It enables simulation, optimal discrimination, reweighting techniques, and analysis of a bosonic resonance and the triple and quartic gauge boson interactions with the most general anomalous couplings. The new features, which become especially relevant at the current stage of LHC data taking, are the simulation of gluon fusion and vector boson fusion in the off-shell region, associated $ZH$ production at NLO QCD including the $gg$ initial state, and the simul…
The determination of the primary energy and mass of ultra-high-energy cosmic-rays (UHECR) generating extensive air-showers in the Earth's atmosphere, relies on the detailed modeling of hadronic multiparticle production at center-of-mass (c.m.) collision energies up to two orders of magnitude higher than those studied at particle colliders. The first Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data have extended by more than a factor of three the c.m. energies in which we have direct proton-proton measurements available to compare to hadronic models. In this work we compare LHC results on inclusive particle pr…
I describe the current status of MCnet tools for validating the performance of event generator simulations against data, and for tuning their phenomenological free parameters. For validation, the Rivet toolkit is now a mature and complete system, with a large library of prominent benchmark analyses. For tuning, the Professor system has recently completed its first tunes of Pythia 6, with substantial improvements on the existing default tune and potential to greatly aid the setup of new generators for LHC studies.
Sartre has been extensively used for describing photon-nuclei processes at the electron-ion collider (EIC) as well as ultra-peripheral collisions (UPC) at LHC and RHIC. Sartre is an event generator which implements the dipole model for DIS, and models the transverse geometry of the target nucleus or proton in coordinate space. It uses the Good-Walker mechanism for simulating fluctuations which contribute to the incoherent cross section for which the target breaks up after the interaction. With improved precision of UPC measurements in the last years, a detailed test of the dipole model has bec…
We study the fine tuning in the parameter space of the semi-constrained NMSSM, where most soft Susy breaking parameters are universal at the GUT scale. We discuss the dependence of the fine tuning on the soft Susy breaking parameters M_1/2 and m0, and on the Higgs masses in NMSSM specific scenarios involving large singlet-doublet Higgs mixing or dominant Higgs-to-Higgs decays. Whereas these latter scenarios allow a priori for considerably less fine tuning than the constrained MSSM, the early LHC results rule out a large part of the parameter space of the semi-constrained NMSSM corresponding to…
In this paper, conventional Global QCD analysis is generalized to produce parton distributions optimized for use with event generators at the LHC. This optimization is accomplished by combining the constraints due to existing hard-scattering experimental data with those from anticipated cross sections for key representative SM processes at LHC (by the best available theory) as joint input to the global analyses. The PDFs obtained in these new type of global analyses using matrix elements calculated in any given order will be best suited to work with event generators of that order, for predicti…
Beyond 2025 we will enter the High-Luminosity era of the LHC, right after the upgrades of the third Long Shutdown of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The ongoing state-of-the-art experimental instrument upgrades require high-performance simulation support in the background, that is modern, robust, and comes with long term support. The original FORTRAN based HIJING (Heavy Ion Jet INteraction Generator) has been used intensively since almost three decades by the high energy physics and heavy-ion community. However, it is getting overly challenging to conform to these new requirements. Our novel …
We present the Monte Carlo generator tuning strategy followed, and the tools developed, by the MCnet CEDAR project. We also present new tuning results for the Pythia 6.4 event generator which are based on event shape and hadronisation observables from e+e- experiments, and on underlying event and minimum bias data from the Tevatron. Our new tunes are compared to existing tunes and to Peter Skands' new "Perugia" tunes.
The status of the multi-purpose event generator HELAC is briefly presented. The aim of this tool is the full simulation of events within the Standard Model at current and future high energy experiments, in particular the LHC. Some results related to the production of multi-jet final states at the LHC are also discussed.
We study a phenomenological ansatz for merging next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) calculations with Monte Carlo event generators. We reweight them to match bin-integrated NNLO differential distributions. To test this procedure, we study the Higgs boson production cross-section at the LHC, for which a fully differential partonic NNLO calculation is available. We normalize PYTHIA and MC@NLO Monte Carlo events for Higgs production in the gluon fusion channel to reproduce the bin integrated NNLO double differential distribution in the transverse momentum and rapidity of the Higgs boson. These ev…
In this paper we argue that having available higher order fully exclusive Monte Carlo generator for Higgs boson production from heavy quark fusion will be mandatory for data analysis at LHC. The H to tau tau channel, a key for early discovery of the Higgs boson in the MSSM scenario, is discussed. With simplified example and for mH = 120 GeV we show, that depending on choice among presently available approaches, used for simulation of Higgs boson production from b bbar H Yukawa coupling, final acceptance for the signal events being reconstructed inside mass window may differ by a factor of 3. T…
I describe the work of the CEDAR collaboration in developing tools for tuning and validating Monte Carlo event generator programs. The core CEDAR task is to interface the Durham HepData database of experimental measurements to event generator validation tools such as the UCL JetWeb system - this has necessitated the migration of HepData to a new relational database system and a Java-based interaction model. The "number crunching" part of JetWeb is also being upgraded, from the Fortran HZTool library to the new C++ Rivet system and a generator interfacing layer named RivetGun. Finally, I descri…
In this proceedings I discuss the general strategy and impact of tuning Monte-Carlo event generators for physics processes involving top quarks. Special emphasis is put on disinguishing the different usages of event generators in the experiments and the subsequent implications on the tuning process. The current status of determining tune uncertainties is also discussed.
The merging procedure of tree-level matrix elements and the subsequent parton shower as implemented in the new event generator SHERPA will be validated for the example of single gauge boson production at the LHC. The validation includes consistency checks and comparisons to results obtained from other event generators. In particular, comparisons with full next-to-leading order QCD calculations prove SHERPA's ability to correctly account for additional hard QCD radiation present in these processes.
With the High Luminosity LHC coming online in the near future, event generators will need to provide very large event samples to match the experimental precision. Currently, the estimated cost to generate these events exceeds the computing budget of the LHC experiments. To address these issues, the computing efficiency of event generators need to be improved. Many different approaches are being taken to achieve this goal. I will cover the ongoing work on implementing event generators on the GPUs, machine learning the matrix element, machine learning the phase space, and minimizing the number o…
Poor computing efficiency of precision event generators for LHC physics has become a bottleneck for Monte-Carlo event simulation campaigns. We provide solutions to this problem by focusing on two major components of general-purpose event generators: The PDF evaluator and the matrix-element generator. For a typical production setup in the ATLAS experiment, we show that the two can consume about 80% of the total runtime. Using NLO simulations of $pp\to\ell^+\ell^-+\text{jets}$ and $pp\to t\bar{t}+\text{jets}$ as an example, we demonstrate that the computing footprint of LHAPDF and Sherpa can be …
The PYTHIA 8 generator is used to estimate the percentage of non-diffractive and diffractive events at the LHC energies. It is shown that a simple condition of the absence of charged hadrons in the central pseudorapidity region is sufficient to remove almost all non-diffractive events. This opens the way to investigate diffraction without waiting for the future specialized detectors.
To measure the $R$ value in an energy scan experiment with $\ee$ collisions, precise calculation of initial state radiation is required in event generators. We present an event generator for this consideration, which incorporates initial state radiation effects up to the second order accuracy, and the radiative correction factor is calculated using the totally hadronic Born cross section. The measured exclusive processes are generated according to their cross sections, while the unknown processes are generated using the LUND Area Law model, and its parameters are tuned with data collected at $…
General-purpose Monte Carlo event generators have become important tools in particle physics, allowing the simulation of exclusive hadronic final states. In this article we examine the Pythia 8 generator, in particular focusing on its parton-shower algorithms. Some relevant new additions to the code are introduced, that should allow for a better description of data. We also implement and compare with 2 to 3 real-emission QCD matrix elements, to check how well the shower algorithm fills the phase space away from the soft and collinear regions. A tuning of the generator to Tevatron data is perfo…
