Top-pair production and decay at NLO matched with parton showers

Campbell, John M.; Ellis, R. Keith; Nason, Paolo; Re, Emanuele

Abstract

We present a next-to-leading order (NLO) calculation of tt¯ production in hadronic collisions interfaced to shower generators according to the POWHEG method. We start from an NLO result from previous work, obtained in the zero width limit, where radiative corrections to both production and decays are included. The POWHEG interface required an extension of the POWHEG BOX framework, in order to deal with radiation from the decay of resonances. This extension is fully general (i.e. it can be applied in principle to any process considered in the zero width limit), and is here applied for the first time. In order to perform a realistic simulation, we introduce finite width effects using different approximations, that we validated by comparing with published exact NLO results. We have interfaced our POWHEG code to the PYTHIA8 shower Monte Carlo generator. At this stage, we dealt with novel issues related to the treatment of resonances, especially with regard to the initial scale for the shower that needs to be set appropriately. This procedure affects, for example, the fragmentation function of the b quark, that we have studied with particular attention. We believe that the tool presented here improves over previous generators for all aspects that have to do with top decays, and especially for the study of issues related to top mass measurements that involve B hadrons or b jets. The work presented here also constitutes a first step towards a fully consistent matching of NLO calculations involving intermediate resonances decaying into coloured particles, with parton showers.

Citation

Campbell, J. M., Ellis, R. K., Nason, P., & Re, E. (2015). Top-pair production and decay at NLO matched with parton showers. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2015(04), Article 114. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep04%282015%29114

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 30, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Apr 21, 2015
• Publication Date: Apr 21, 2015
• Deposit Date: Jul 11, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 17, 2018
• Journal: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Print ISSN: 1126-6708
• Electronic ISSN: 1029-8479
• Publisher: Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2015
• Issue: 04
• Article Number: 114
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep04%282015%29114
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1326519