Accelerating LHC event generation with simplified pilot runs and fast PDFs

Abstract

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 reduced by factors of order 10, while maintaining the formal accuracy of the event sample. The improved codes are made publicly available.

21 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, 2 listings

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• The $q_{\mathrm{T}}$ and $\Delta {\varphi }_{t\bar{t}}$ spectra in top-antitop hadroproduction at NNLL+NNLO: the interplay of soft-collinear resummation and Coulomb singularities
• An Algorithm to Parallelise Parton Showers on a GPU
• Towards a Fully Automated Differential ${\text{NNLO}}_{\text{EW}}$ Generator for Lepton Colliders
• Accelerating Berends-Giele recursion for gluons in arbitrary dimensions over finite fields
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