General-purpose event generators for LHC physics

Abstract

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 and diffractive processes; the string and cluster models for hadron formation; the treatment of hadron and tau decays; the inclusion of QED radiation and beyond-Standard-Model processes. We describe the principal features of the ARIADNE, Herwig++, PYTHIA 8 and SHERPA generators, together with the Rivet and Professor validation and tuning tools, and discuss the physics philosophy behind the proper use of these generators and tools. This review is aimed at phenomenologists wishing to understand better how parton-level predictions are translated into hadron-level events as well as experimentalists wanting a deeper insight into the tools available for signal and background simulation at the LHC.

226 pages, 30 figures, submitted to Physics Reports

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• PYTHIA 6.4 Physics and Manual
• Parton distributions for the LHC
• Event generation with SHERPA 1.1
• Herwig++ Physics and Manual
• A parton shower algorithm based on Catani-Seymour dipole factorisation
• FeynRules - Feynman rules made easy
• Comparative study of various algorithms for the merging of parton showers and matrix elements in hadronic collisions
• Echoes of a Hidden Valley at Hadron Colliders
• A standard format for Les Houches Event Files
• NLO vector-boson production matched with shower in POWHEG
• An Automated Implementation of On-Shell Methods for One-Loop Amplitudes
• Parton Distributions for LO Generators
• Measurements of Strange Particle Production in $p+p$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s}$= 200 GeV
• Automation of next-to-leading order computations in QCD: the FKS subtraction
• Measuring the running top-quark mass
• Jets from Massive Unstable Particles: Top-Mass Determination
• Automating dipole subtraction for QCD NLO calculations
• Next-to-Leading Order QCD Predictions for W+3-Jet Distributions at Hadron Colliders
• Top Jets in the Peak Region: Factorization Analysis with NLL Resummation
• Non-perturbative QCD Effects and the Top Mass at the Tevatron
• A simple shower and matching algorithm
• Helac-Phegas: a generator for all parton level processes
• Dominant QCD Backgrounds in Higgs Boson Analyses at the LHC: A Study of pp -> t anti-t + 2 jets at Next-To-Leading Order
• Non-perturbative QCD effects in jets at hadron colliders
• Parton showers with quantum interference
• Polarizing the Dipoles
• Soft Photon Radiation in Particle Decays in SHERPA
• Automation of the Dipole Subtraction Method in MadGraph/MadEvent
• Simulation of multiple partonic interactions in Herwig++
• Infrared Renormalization Group Flow for Heavy Quark Masses
• Top Mass Measurements from Jets and the Tevatron Top-Quark Mass
• Determination of the effective strong coupling constant alpha_{s,g_1}(Q^2) from CLAS spin structure function data
• A modified CKKW matrix element merging approach to angular-ordered parton showers
• Extending CKKW-merging to One-Loop Matrix Elements
• Parton showers from the dipole formalism
• Initial-state showering based on colour dipoles connected to incoming parton lines
• Color Sextet Scalars at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
• Soft processes at the LHC, I: Multi-component model
• Two-loop Jet-Function and Jet-Mass for Top Quarks
• Merging parton showers and matrix elements -- back to basics
• A Positive-Weight Next-to-Leading Order Monte Carlo Simulation of Drell-Yan Vector Boson Production
• A Positive-Weight Next-to-Leading Order Monte Carlo Simulation for Higgs Boson Production
• Evidence for an Excess of Soft Photons in Hadronic Decays of Z^0
• Double parton scattering, diffraction and effective cross section
• Simulation of QED Radiation in Particle decays using the YFS Formalism
• A model of non-perturbative gluon emission in an initial state parton shower
• Monte Carlo and large angle gluon radiation
• Simulation of Beyond Standard Model Physics in Herwig++
• The Underlying Event and the Total Cross Section from Tevatron to the LHC
• Searching for Nambu-Goldstone Bosons at the LHC
• Final state dipole showers and the DGLAP equation
• Study of Leading Hadrons in Gluon and Quark Fragmentation
• On the High Energy Behaviour of The Total Cross Section in the QCD Dipole Model

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• Herwig 7.0 / Herwig++ 3.0 Release Note
• Event Generation with Sherpa 2.2
• A critical appraisal of NLO+PS matching methods
• Topological cell clustering in the ATLAS calorimeters and its performance in LHC Run 1
• Jet energy measurement with the ATLAS detector in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
• Update of the global electroweak fit and constraints on two-Higgs-doublet models
• Pileup Per Particle Identification
• Jet energy measurement and its systematic uncertainty in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV with the ATLAS detector
• String Formation Beyond Leading Colour
• Jet Substructure at the Large Hadron Collider: A Review of Recent Advances in Theory and Machine Learning
• Analysing radial flow features in p-Pb and p-p collisions at several TeV by studying identified particle production in EPOS3
• 50 Years of Quantum Chromodynamics
• Event Generation with Normalizing Flows
• Elements of a theory for multiparton interactions in QCD
• A perturbative framework for jet quenching
• Measurement of the top quark mass using proton-proton data at sqrt(s) = 7 and 8 TeV
• The midpoint between dipole and parton showers
• Combination of the top-quark mass measurements from the Tevatron collider
• Parton showers beyond leading logarithmic accuracy
• Drell-Yan lepton pair production at NNLO QCD with parton showers
• Heavy quarks and jets as probes of the QGP
• Higgs-boson production through gluon fusion at NNLO QCD with parton showers
• Measurement of the $t\bar{t}$ production cross-section using $e\mu$ events with $b$-tagged jets in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$ and 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector
• Towards an all-orders calculation of the electroweak bubble wall velocity
• Why should we care about the top quark Yukawa coupling?
• Progress in the Determination of the Partonic Structure of the Proton
• Measurement of the Underlying Event Activity at the LHC with sqrt(s)= 7 TeV and Comparison with sqrt(s) = 0.9 TeV
• Higher-Order Corrections to Timelike Jets
• Automated Parton-Shower Variations in Pythia 8
• A quantum algorithm for high energy physics simulations
• Logarithmic accuracy of parton showers: a fixed-order study
• Measurement of the $\mathrm{t}\overline{\mathrm{t}}$ production cross section, the top quark mass, and the strong coupling constant using dilepton events in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV
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• Reweighting QCD matrix-element and parton-shower calculations
• Measurement of the top quark mass in the $t\bar{t}\to$ lepton+jets channel from $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV ATLAS data and combination with previous results
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• Exploring phase space with Neural Importance Sampling
• The PYTHIA Event Generator: Past, Present and Future
• Inclusive and Exclusive observables from dipoles in high energy collisions
• Triple collinear emissions in parton showers
• Thinking outside the ROCs: Designing Decorrelated Taggers (DDT) for jet substructure
• Weak Gauge Boson Radiation in Parton Showers
• Measurement of the t-tbar production cross section in the e-mu channel in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 and 8 TeV
• Implementing NLO DGLAP evolution in Parton Showers
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• Vincia for Hadron Colliders
• Beyond Standard Model calculations with Sherpa
• The Space-Time Structure of Hadronization in the Lund Model
• Direct observation of the dead-cone effect in QCD
• Chemical Equilibration in Hadronic Collisions
• Constraints on parton distribution functions and extraction of the strong coupling constant from the inclusive jet cross section in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
• Leading-color fully differential two-loop soft corrections to QCD dipole showers
• Challenges in Monte Carlo event generator software for High-Luminosity LHC
• Determination of the pole and MSbar masses of the top quark from the ttbar cross section
• A measurement of the soft-drop jet mass in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector
• NLO QCD corrections to W+ W- b anti-b production with leptonic decays in the light of top quark mass and asymmetry measurements
• Precision Studies of QCD in the Low Energy Domain of the EIC
• Event Generators for High-Energy Physics Experiments
• Accelerating Monte Carlo event generation -- rejection sampling using neural network event-weight estimates
• Some Dipole Shower Studies
• Antenna Showers with One-Loop Matrix Elements
• Standard Model Parton Distributions at Very High Energies
• Measurement of the top quark mass in the $t\bar{t}\to \mathrm{lepton}+\mathrm{jets}$ and $t\bar{t}\to \mathrm{dilepton}$ channels using $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV ATLAS data
• Simulation of vector boson plus many jet final states at the high luminosity LHC
• Finding physics signals with event deconstruction
• Next-to-next-to-leading order event generation for top-quark pair production
• Measurements of the differential jet cross section as a function of the jet mass in dijet events from proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV
• Fiducial $q_T$ resummation of color-singlet processes at N${}^3$LL+NNLO
• Measurement of distributions sensitive to the underlying event in inclusive Z-boson production in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV with the ATLAS detector
• W+n-jet predictions at the Large Hadron Collider at next-to-leading order matched with a parton shower
• QCD Coherence and the Top Quark Asymmetry
• Measurement of jet substructure observables in $\mathrm{t}\overline{\mathrm{t}}$ events from proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13TeV
• Reweighting Parton Showers
• Measurement of the top quark mass with the template method in the top antitop -> lepton + jets channel using ATLAS data
• Underlying Event measurements in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 0.9 and 7 TeV with the ALICE experiment at the LHC
• Next-to-Leading-Order Event Generators
• Measurement of the inclusive jet cross-sections in proton--proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$8 TeV with the ATLAS detector
• Scaling Patterns for QCD Jets
• Determination of the top-quark pole mass using $t\bar{t}+1$-jet events collected with the ATLAS experiment in 7 TeV $pp$ collisions
• On jet substructure methods for signal jets
• Opacity dependence of elliptic flow in kinetic theory
• Constraining new physics with collider measurements of Standard Model signatures
• Matching NLO QCD with parton shower in Monte Carlo scheme - the KrkNLO method
• Probing Collective Effects in Hadronisation with the Extremes of the Underlying Event
• Antenna Showers with Hadronic Initial States
• Phase Space Sampling and Inference from Weighted Events with Autoregressive Flows
• Jet Angularities in Z+jet production at the LHC
• $B\bar{B}$ angular correlations at the LHC in parton Reggeization approach merged with higher-order matrix elements
• Fooling Around with the Sudakov Veto Algorithm
• Quantum walk approach to simulating parton showers
• Dissecting Soft Radiation with Factorization
• Phenomenology of jet angularities at the LHC
• MCPLOTS: a particle physics resource based on volunteer computing
• EKO: Evolution Kernel Operators
• PineAPPL: combining EW and QCD corrections for fast evaluation of LHC processes
• Improving the Simulation of Quark and Gluon Jets with Herwig 7
• Merging NLO Multi-jet Calculations with Improved Unitarization
• Triple (and quadruple) soft-gluon radiation in QCD hard scattering
• Top Quark Physics at the LHC: A Review of the First Two Years
• Multiplicity and transverse momentum evolution of charge-dependent correlations in pp, p-Pb, and Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC
• The dijet cross section with a jet veto
• $Z^{\prime }$, Higgses and heavy neutrinos in $U(1{)}^{\prime }$ models: from the LHC to the GUT scale
• Forward-backward multiplicity correlations in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}$=0.9, 2.76 and 7 TeV
• Fitting the Strong Coupling Constant with Soft-Drop Thrust
• Reweighting a parton shower using a neural network: the final-state case
• Monte Carlo tuning in the presence of Matching
• The performance of the jet trigger for the ATLAS detector during 2011 data taking
• Towards a Quantum Computing Algorithm for Helicity Amplitudes and Parton Showers
• Measurement of lepton differential distributions and the top quark mass in $t\bar{t}$ production in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV with the ATLAS detector
• Simulating $b$-associated production of $Z$ and Higgs bosons with SHERPA
• Determination of jet calibration and energy resolution in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 TeV using the ATLAS detector
• What is a parton shower?
• Jets and QCD: A Historical Review of the Discovery of the Quark and Gluon Jets and its Impact on QCD
• Timelike Dipole-Antenna Showers with Massive Fermions
• Forward-backward correlations and charged-particle azimuthal distributions in pp interactions using the ATLAS detector
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• Jet and underlying event properties as a function of particle multiplicity in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
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• MCgrid: projecting cross section calculations on grids
• Measurement of the nuclear modification factor and prompt charged particle production in $p\mathrm{Pb}$ and $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5\mathrm{TeV}$
• Calibration of the Top-Quark Monte-Carlo Mass
• Properties of jet fragmentation using charged particles measured with the ATLAS detector in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV
• Coherent Showers in Decays of Colored Resonances
• Hadronic Final States in DIS at NNLO QCD with Parton Showers
• Estimating QCD uncertainties in Monte Carlo event generators for gamma-ray dark matter searches
• Exploring Theory Space with Monte Carlo Reweighting
• On stochastically sampling color configurations
• Soft-drop grooming for hadronic event shapes
• Soft-gluon effective coupling and cusp anomalous dimension
• Towards a Deep Learning Model for Hadronization
• Next-to-Leading-Order Monte Carlo Simulation of Diphoton Production in Hadronic Collisions
• Multi-jet merging in a variable flavor number scheme
• Resummed predictions for jet-resolution scales in multijet production in $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ annihilation
• Interpretation of the measurements of total, elastic and diffractive cross sections at LHC
• Efficient Matrix-Element Matching with Sector Showers
• Using gamma+jets Production to Calibrate the Standard Model Z(nunu)+jets Background to New Physics Processes at the LHC
• Aspects of pQCD at a 100 TeV future hadron collider
• QED Bremsstrahlung in decays of electroweak bosons
• Disentangling soft and collinear effects in QCD parton showers
• Collider Events on a Quantum Computer
• QCD Challenges from pp to A-A Collisions
• Unweighting multijet event generation using factorisation-aware neural networks
• (MC)**3 -- a Multi-Channel Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm for phase-space sampling
• Merging weak and QCD showers with matrix elements
• Collinear Electroweak Radiation in Antenna Parton Showers
• Accelerating LHC event generation with simplified pilot runs and fast PDFs
• Combining states without scale hierarchies with ordered parton showers
• Towards stability of NLO corrections in High-Energy Factorization via Modified Multi-Regge Kinematics approximation
• High dimensional parameter tuning for event generators
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• Supersymmetry and Generic BSM Models in PYTHIA 8
• Higher-order EW corrections in ZZ and ZZj production at the LHC
• Revisiting Radiation Patterns in $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ Collisions
• Angular Scaling in Jets
• The Higgs boson Turns Ten
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• Multipole Photon Radiation in the Vincia Parton Shower
• The Top Quark
• Multivariate Rational Approximation
• Collinear Drop
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• ExSample -- A Library for Sampling Sudakov-Type Distributions
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• Documentation of TauSpinner algorithms -- program for simulating spin effects in tau-lepton production at LHC
• CMS PYTHIA 8 colour reconnection tunes based on underlying-event data
• Hard Processes in Proton-Proton Collisions at the Large Hadron Collider
• Collective Effects: the viewpoint of HEP MC codes
• Reweighting Monte Carlo Predictions and Automated Fragmentation Variations in Pythia 8
• Dissecting the collinear structure of quark splitting at NNLL
• A Portable Parton-Level Event Generator for the High-Luminosity LHC
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• Jet vetoing and Herwig++
• A CT18 global PDF fit at the leading order in QCD
• Computational challenges for MC event generation
• First measurement of ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{c}}^0$ production in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV
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• Modification of jet structure in high-multiplicity pp collisions due to multiple-parton interactions and observing a multiplicity-independent characteristic jet size
• On the impact of selected modern deep-learning techniques to the performance and celerity of classification models in an experimental high-energy physics use case
• Exploring phase space with Nested Sampling
• A precise determination of the top-quark pole mass
• A Forward Branching Phase Space Generator for Hadron colliders
• Helicity-Dependent Showers and Matching with VINCIA
• Review of single vector boson production in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV
• Determination of the top-quark $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ running mass via its perturbative relation to the on-shell mass with the help of principle of maximum conformality
• Transport away your problems: Calibrating stochastic simulations with optimal transport
• Jet fragmentation transverse momentum measurements from di-hadron correlations in $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV pp and $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV p-Pb collisions
• Effect of polarisation and choice of event generator on spectra from dark matter annihilations
• BSM constraints from model-independent measurements: A Contur Update
• Hunting for QCD Instantons at the LHC in Events with Large Rapidity Gaps
• Mixed EW-QCD leading fermionic three-loop corrections at $\mathcal{O}({\alpha }_s{\alpha }^2)$ to electroweak precision observables
• Monte Carlo Simulation of Hard Radiation in Decays in Beyond the Standard Model Physics in Herwig++
• Measurements of observables sensitive to colour reconnection in $t\bar{t}$ events with the ATLAS detector at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV
• Colour Rearrangement for Dipole Showers
• Final-state QED Multipole Radiation in Antenna Parton Showers
• Climbing to the Top of the ATLAS 13 TeV data
• Interpretable deep learning models for the inference and classification of LHC data
• Scale and Scheme Variations in Unitarized NLO Merging
• OASIS: Optimal Analysis-Specific Importance Sampling for event generation
• Eikonal amplitudes for three-hard legs processes at finite-N${}_c$
• A Bayesian tune of the Herwig Monte Carlo event generator
• Connecting the underlying event with jet properties in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV with the ALICE experiment
• The Standard Model: How far can it go and how can we tell?
• Top-Quark Physics at the LHC
• Jet fragmentation transverse momentum distributions in pp and p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV
• Jet Classification Using High-Level Features from Anatomy of Top Jets
• Resampling Algorithms for High Energy Physics Simulations
• Measurements of angular distance and momentum ratio distributions in three-jet and Z + two-jet final states in pp collisions
• Studies of Quantum Chromodynamics at the LHC
• Accelerating multijet-merged event generation with neural network matrix element surrogates
• A parton shower generator based on the GLR equation
• Understanding the transverse-spherocity biased data from pp collisions at the LHC energies
• DIS structure functions in the NLO approximation of the Parton Reggeization Approach
• QCD parton showers and NLO EW corrections to Drell-Yan
• Measurements of Lund subjet multiplicities in 13 TeV proton-proton collisions with the ATLAS detector
• Top Quark Physics at the Tevatron
• Studying minijets and MPI with rapidity correlations
• Forward-backward correlations with strange particles in PYTHIA
• CIMBA: fast Monte Carlo generation using cubic interpolation
• Reanalysis of the top-quark pair hadroproduction and a precise determination of the top-quark pole mass at the LHC
• Achieving near native runtime performance and cross-platform performance portability for random number generation through SYCL interoperability
• A new approach to color-coherent parton evolution
• Precise determination of the top-quark on-shell mass $M_t$ via its scale-invariant perturbative relation to the top-quark $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ mass ${\overline{m}}_t({\overline{m}}_t)$
• Consistent, multidimensional differential histogramming and summary statistics with YODA 2
• Gaussian Process Regression as a Sustainable Data-driven Background Estimate Method at the (HL)-LHC
• Post-hoc reweighting of hadron production in the Lund string model
• Jet Structure Studies in Small Systems
• Transforming jet flavour tagging at ATLAS
• Multiplicity Dependence of the Jet Structures in pp Collisions at LHC Energies
• Challenges for QCD theory - some personal reflections -
• Exploring the Universality of Hadronic Jet Classification
• An Algorithm to Parallelise Parton Showers on a GPU
• Soft QCD Physics at the LHC: highlights and opportunities
• Learning to discover: expressive Gaussian mixture models for multi-dimensional simulation and parameter inference in the physical sciences
• Comparing the PYTHIA Monte Carlo to a two-component (soft + hard) model of hadron production in high-energy p-p collisions
• First measurement of $b$-jet mass with and without grooming
• A continuous calibration of the ATLAS flavour-tagging classifiers via optimal transportation maps
• Many-gluon tree amplitudes on modern GPUs: A case study for novel event generators
• The three point asymmetric cumulants in high multiplicity pp collisions
• Multi-Jet Production in Deep Inelastic Scattering with Pythia
• Focused Angular $N$-Body Event Generator (FANG)
• D${}^0$-meson-tagged jet axes difference in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{\text{s}}=5.02$ TeV
• The evaluation of the systematic uncertainties for the finite MC samples in the presence of negative weights
• Observable Optimization for Precision Theory: Machine Learning Energy Correlators
• Monte Carlo Event Generators
• Generators and the (Accelerated) Future
• HYTREES: Combining Matrix Elements and Parton Shower for Hypothesis Testing
• Strong CWoLa: Binary Classification Without Background Simulation
• On the reconstruction of kinematic distributions computed with Monte Carlo methods using orthogonal basis functions
• On the simulated kinematic distributions of heavy meson decays
• Monte Carlo Event Generators for Future Lepton Colliders
• How-to: Write a parton-level Monte Carlo event generator
• Measurement of the $t\bar{t}$ production cross-section and lepton differential distributions in $e\mu$ dilepton events from $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector
• Hadronization from color interactions
• Cluster Hadronisation in Sherpa
• Coloring mixed QCD/QED evolution