Contributor info: Dr Christian Tobias Preuss

J. M. Campbell, M. Diefenthaler, T. J. Hobbs, S. Höche, J. Isaacson, F. Kling, S. Mrenna, J. Reuter, S. Alioli, J. R. Andersen, C. Andreopoulos, A. M. Ankowski, E. C. Aschenauer, A. Ashkenazi, M. D. Baker, J. L. Barrow, M. van Beekveld, G. Bewick, S. Bhattacharya, C. Bierlich, E. Bothmann, P. Bredt, A. Broggio, A. Buckley, A. Butter, J. M. Butterworth, E. P. Byrne, C. M. Carloni-Calame, S. Chakraborty, X. Chen, M. Chiesa, J. T. Childers, J. Cruz-Martinez, J. Currie, N. Darvishi, M. Dasgupta, A. Denner, F. A. Dreyer, S. Dytman, B. K. El-Menoufi, T. Engel, S. Ferrario Ravasio, D. Figueroa, L. Flower, J. R. Forshaw, R. Frederix, A. Friedland, S. Frixione, H. Gallagher, K. Gallmeister, S. Gardiner, R. Gauld, J. Gaunt, A. Gavardi, T. Gehrmann, A. Gehrmann-De Ridder, L. Gellersen, W. Giele, S. Gieseke, F. Giuli, E. W. N. Glover, M. Grazzini, A. Grohsjean, C. Gütschow, K. Hamilton, T. Han, R. Hatcher, G. Heinrich, I. Helenius, O. Hen, V. Hirschi, M. Höfer, J. Holguin, A. Huss, P. Ilten, S. Jadach, A. Jentsch, S. P. Jones, W. Ju, S. Kallweit, A. Karlberg, T. Katori, M. Kerner, W. Kilian, M. M. Kirchgaeßer, S. Klein, M. Knobbe, C. Krause, F. Krauss, J. Lang, J. -N. Lang, G. Lee, S. W. Li, M. A. Lim, J. M. Lindert, D. Lombardi, L. Lönnblad, M. Löschner, N. Lurkin, Y. Ma, P. Machado, V. Magerya, A. Maier, I. Majer, F. Maltoni, M. Marcoli, G. Marinelli, M. R. Masouminia, P. Mastrolia, O. Mattelaer, J. Mazzitelli, J. McFayden, R. Medves, P. Meinzinger, J. Mo, P. F. Monni, G. Montagna, T. Morgan, U. Mosel, B. Nachman, P. Nadolsky, R. Nagar, Z. Nagy, D. Napoletano, P. Nason, T. Neumann, L. J. Nevay, O. Nicrosini, J. Niehues, K. Niewczas, T. Ohl, G. Ossola, V. Pandey, A. Papadopoulou, A. Papaefstathiou, G. Paz, M. Pellen, G. Pelliccioli, T. Peraro, F. Piccinini, L. Pickering, J. Pires, W. Placzek, S. Plätzer, T. Plehn, S. Pozzorini, S. Prestel, C. T. Preuss, A. C. Price, S. Quackenbush, E. Re, D. Reichelt, L. Reina, C. Reuschle, P. Richardson, M. Rocco, N. Rocco, M. Roda, A. Rodriguez Garcia, S. Roiser, J. Rojo, L. Rottoli, G. P. Salam, M. Schönherr, S. Schuchmann, S. Schumann, R. Schürmann, L. Scyboz, M. H. Seymour, F. Siegert, A. Signer, G. Singh Chahal, A. Siódmok, T. Sjöstrand, P. Skands, J. M. Smillie, J. T. Sobczyk, D. Soldin, D. E. Soper, A. Soto-Ontoso, G. Soyez, G. Stagnitto, J. Tena-Vidal, O. Tomalak, F. Tramontano, S. Trojanowski, Z. Tu, S. Uccirati, T. Ullrich, Y. Ulrich, M. Utheim, A. Valassi, A. Verbytskyi, R. Verheyen, M. Wagman, D. Walker, B. R. Webber, L. Weinstein, O. White, J. Whitehead, M. Wiesemann, C. Wilkinson, C. Williams, R. Winterhalder, C. Wret, K. Xie, T-Z. Yang, E. Yazgan, G. Zanderighi, S. Zanoli, K. Zapp

SciPost Phys. 16, 130 (2024) · published 24 May 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We provide an overview of the status of Monte-Carlo event generators for high-energy particle physics. Guided by the experimental needs and requirements, we highlight areas of active development, and opportunities for future improvements. Particular emphasis is given to physics models and algorithms that are employed across a variety of experiments. These common themes in event generator development lead to a more comprehensive understanding of physics at the highest energies and intensities, and allow models to be tested against a wealth of data that have been accumulated over the past decades. A cohesive approach to event generator development will allow these models to be further improved and systematic uncertainties to be reduced, directly contributing to future experimental success. Event generators are part of a much larger ecosystem of computational tools. They typically involve a number of unknown model parameters that must be tuned to experimental data, while maintaining the integrity of the underlying physics models. Making both these data, and the analyses with which they have been obtained accessible to future users is an essential aspect of open science and data preservation. It ensures the consistency of physics models across a variety of experiments.

Christian Bierlich, Smita Chakraborty, Nishita Desai, Leif Gellersen, Ilkka Helenius, Philip Ilten, Leif Lönnblad, Stephen Mrenna, Stefan Prestel, Christian T. Preuss, Torbjörn Sjöstrand, Peter Skands, Marius Utheim, Rob Verheyen

SciPost Phys. Codebases 8 (2022) · published 10 November 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

This manual describes the Pythia event generator, the most recent version of an evolving physics tool used to answer fundamental questions in particle physics. The program is most often used to generate high-energy-physics collision "events", i.e. sets of particles produced in association with the collision of two incoming high-energy particles, but has several uses beyond that. The guiding philosophy is to produce and re-produce properties of experimentally obtained collisions as accurately as possible. The program includes a wide ranges of reactions within and beyond the Standard Model, and extending to heavy ion physics. Emphasis is put on phenomena where strong interactions play a major role. The manual contains both pedagogical and practical components. All included physics models are described in enough detail to allow the user to obtain a cursory overview of used assumptions and approximations, enabling an informed evaluation of the program output. A number of the most central algorithms are described in enough detail that the main results of the program can be reproduced independently, allowing further development of existing models or the addition of new ones. Finally, a chapter dedicated fully to the user is included towards the end, providing pedagogical examples of standard use cases, and a detailed description of a number of external interfaces. The program code, the online manual, and the latest version of this print manual can be found on the Pythia web page: https://www.pythia.org/.

Christian Bierlich, Smita Chakraborty, Nishita Desai, Leif Gellersen, Ilkka Helenius, Philip Ilten, Leif Lönnblad, Stephen Mrenna, Stefan Prestel, Christian T. Preuss, Torbjörn Sjöstrand, Peter Skands, Marius Utheim, Rob Verheyen

SciPost Phys. Codebases 8-r8.3 (2022) · published 10 November 2022 | Toggle abstract · src

This manual describes the Pythia event generator, the most recent version of an evolving physics tool used to answer fundamental questions in particle physics. The program is most often used to generate high-energy-physics collision "events", i.e. sets of particles produced in association with the collision of two incoming high-energy particles, but has several uses beyond that. The guiding philosophy is to produce and re-produce properties of experimentally obtained collisions as accurately as possible. The program includes a wide ranges of reactions within and beyond the Standard Model, and extending to heavy ion physics. Emphasis is put on phenomena where strong interactions play a major role. The manual contains both pedagogical and practical components. All included physics models are described in enough detail to allow the user to obtain a cursory overview of used assumptions and approximations, enabling an informed evaluation of the program output. A number of the most central algorithms are described in enough detail that the main results of the program can be reproduced independently, allowing further development of existing models or the addition of new ones. Finally, a chapter dedicated fully to the user is included towards the end, providing pedagogical examples of standard use cases, and a detailed description of a number of external interfaces. The program code, the online manual, and the latest version of this print manual can be found on the Pythia web page: https://www.pythia.org/.

Stefan Höche, Stephen Mrenna, Shay Payne, Christian T Preuss, Peter Skands

SciPost Phys. 12, 010 (2022) · published 10 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We discuss and illustrate the properties of several parton-shower algorithms available in Pythia and Vincia, in the context of Higgs production via vector boson fusion (VBF). In particular, the distinctive colour topology of VBF processes allows to define observables sensitive to the coherent radiation pattern of additional jets. We study a set of such observables, using the Vincia sector-antenna shower as our main reference, and contrast it to Pythia's transverse-momentum-ordered DGLAP shower as well as Pythia's dipole-improved shower. We then investigate the robustness of these predictions as successive levels of higher-order perturbative matrix elements are incorporated, including next-to-leading-order matched and tree-level merged calculations, using Powheg Box and Sherpa respectively to generate the hard events.