NNLOCAL: Completely Local Subtractions for Color-singlet Production in Hadron Collisions

We present NNLOCAL, a proof-of-concept parton-level Monte Carlo program implementing the extension of the completely local subtraction scheme CoLoRFulNNLO to the case of color-singlet production in hadron collisions. We have built general local subtraction terms that regularize all single and double unresolved infrared singularities in real radiation phase space. The subtractions are then integrated fully analytically to the required order in the parameter of dimensional regularization. Combining the integrated counterterms with the virtual contributions we demonstrate the cancellation of all infrared poles explicitly. We validate our procedure by computing the fully differential cross section for the production of a Higgs boson at the LHC in an effective field theory with gluons only. Our code provides the first public implementation of a completely local analytic subtraction scheme at next-to-next-to-leading order accuracy.

Inspired by the picture portraying the KNO scaling violation as an extension of the geometrical scaling violation, the current study proposes a phenomenological model for multi-particle production in hadron collisions based on the geometrical approach and using the U-Matrix unitarization scheme of the scattering amplitude. The model has been fine-tuned and all parameters have been derived from optimal fits to various hadronic multiplicity distributions data in p + pp¯\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ p\\left(\\overline{p}\\right) $$\\end{document} collisions across a broad range of energies. The results have revealed that our model furnishes a reasonable description of diverse multiplicity distributions at various energies. Besides, they have demonstrated a pronounced violation of the geometrical scaling, which eventually resulted in a significant violation of the KNO scaling. The study has also analyzed the higher-order moments of the multiplicity distribution. We have observed an unexpected overestimation of the fluctuations and correlations between final state particles with increasing energy, particularly above LHC energy. It is claimed that this overestimation is due to statistical fluctuations embedded in the U-matrix scheme. The findings of this study have shed light on the key role of the U-matrix scheme in the impact of collision geometry on multi-particle production processes at high energy.

Rapidity and multiplicity correlations of particle production in high energy hadronic collisions are studied. A simple model including short range correlations in rapidity due to clustering and long range correlations due to energy conservation is able to describe the two-body correlation functions well in hadron-nucleon collisions around lab energies of 250 GeV. In this model factorial moments are calculated and compared to data. The strong rise of the factorial moments in rapidity intervals by size δy ~ 1 can be explained by long and short range correlation alone whereas the factorial moments approach a constant value at very small δy due to lack of correlations also in agreement with experiment. There is therefore no need for introducing intermittency in the particle production in hadronic collisions at these energies.

We review the physics of heavy quark and quarkonium production in high energy hadronic collisions. We discuss the status of the theoretical calculations and compare the current results with the most recent measurements from the Tevatron collider experiments.

Recent theoretical progress in several different areas of jet production in high-energy hadron collisions is reviewed and discussed.

An event generator for diphoton ($\gamma\gamma$) production in hadron collisions that includes associated jet production up to two jets has been developed using a subtraction method based on the LLL subtraction. The parton shower (PS) simulation to restore the subtracted divergent components involves both QED and QCD radiation, and QED radiation at very small $Q^{2}$ are simulated by referring to a fragmentation function (FF). The PS/FF simulation has the ability to enforce the radiation of a given number of energetic photons. The generated events can be fed to PYTHIA to obtain particle (hadron)-level event information, which enables us to perform realistic simulations of photon isolation and hadron-jet reconstruction. The simulated events, in which the loop-mediated $gg \rightarrow \gamma\gamma$ process is involved, reasonably reproduce the diphoton kinematics measured at the LHC. Using the developed simulation, we found that the 2-jet processes significantly contribute to diphoton production. A large 2-jet contribution can be considered as a common feature in electroweak-boson production in hadron collisions although the reason is yet to be understood. Discussion concerning the treatment of the underlying events in photon isolation is necessary for future higher precision measurements.

We detail a calculation of W gamma production in hadronic collision, at Next-to-Leading Order (NLO) QCD interfaced to a shower generator according to the POWHEG prescription supplemented with the MiNLO procedure. The fixed order result is matched to an interleaved QCD+QED parton shower, in such a way that the contribution arising from hadron fragmentation into photons is fully modeled. In general, our calculation illustrates a new approach to the fully exclusive simulation of prompt photon production processes accurate at the NLO level in QCD. We compare our predictions to those of the NLO program MCFM, which treats the fragmentation contribution in terms of photon fragmentation functions. We also perform comparisons to available LHC data at 7 TeV, for which we observe good agreement, and provide phenomenological results for physics studies of the W gamma production process at the Run II of the LHC. The new tool, which includes W leptonic decays and the contribution of anomalous gauge couplings, allows a fully exclusive, hadron-level description of the W gamma process, and is publicly available at the repository of the POWHEG BOX. Our approach can be easily adapted to deal with other relevant isolated photon production processes in hadronic collisions.

A scaling law analysis of the world data on inclusive large-p(⊥) hadron production in hadronic collisions is carried out. Significant deviations from leading-twist perturbative QCD predictions at next-to-leading order are observed, particularly at high x(⊥)=2p(⊥)/sqrt[s]. In contrast, the production of prompt photons and jets exhibits near-conformal scaling behavior in agreement with leading-twist expectations. These results indicate a non-negligible contribution of higher-twist processes in large-p(⊥) hadron production, where the hadron is produced directly in the hard subprocess, rather than by quark and gluon fragmentation. Predictions for the scaling exponents at RHIC and LHC are given. Triggering on isolated large-p(⊥) hadron production will enhance the higher-twist processes. We also note that the use of isolated hadrons as a signal for new physics can be affected by the presence of direct hadron production.

We review recent progress made in the theory of quarkonium production in hadronic collisions.

HatHor for single top-quark production: Updated predictions and uncertainty estimates for single top-quark production in hadronic collisions

QCD radiative corrections to Z boson pair production in hadronic collisions

Recently proposed chiral-color models predict the existence of a massive color octet of vector bosons, the axigluon. In this paper we investigate axigluon production in hadronic collisions. We compute the single-jet inclusive cross section and the two-jet invariant-mass distribution for the CERN collider, the Fermilab Tevatron, and the Superconducting Super Collider. We use CERN data to exclude axigluon masses between 125 and 275 GeV, subject to a mild constraint on the width.

We summarize the theoretical description of charmonium and bottonium production in hadronic collisions and compare it to the available data from hadron-nucleon interactions. With the parameters of the theory established by these data, we obtain predictions for quarkonium production at RHIC and LHC energies.

We present a model for lepton pair production in hadron collisions into which two different production mechanisms are incorporated simultaneously. They are the mechanisms due to the hard interactions of the energetic constituents (partons) in a hadron and due to the soft interactions. We can unify the two mechanisms by solving the Boltzmann equation of parton probability distributions which describes the time-evolution process of hadron collisions. Our model can reproduce well the experimental data on the nonresonant continuum spectrum from small (above 1 ${\mathrm{G}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}/\mathit{c}}^{2}$) to large pair mass.

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.