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Andy Buckley, Jonathan Butterworth, Stefan Gieseke, David Grellscheid,
Stefan Hoche, Hendrik Hoeth, Frank Krauss, Leif Lonnblad, Emily Nurse,
Peter Richardson, Steffen Schumann, Michael H. Seymour, Torbjorn
Sjostrand, Peter Skands, Bryan Webber
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.
LU TP 10-28
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