The Pythia program can be used to generate high-energy-physics ''events'', i.e. sets of outgoing particles produced in the interactions between two incoming particles. The objective is to provide as accurate as possible a representation of event properties in a wide range of reactions, within and beyond the Standard Model, with emphasis on those where strong interactions play a role, directly or indirectly, and therefore multihadronic final states are produced. The physics is then not understood well enough to give an exact description; instead the program has to be based on a combination of analytical results and various QCD-based models. This physics input is summarized here, for areas such as hard subprocesses, initial- and final-state parton showers, underlying events and beam remnants, fragmentation and decays, and much more. Furthermore, extensive information is provided on all program elements: subroutines and functions, switches and parameters, and particle and process data. This should allow the user to tailor the generation task to the topics of interest.

/pdf/pythia-6-4-physics-and-manual-3dvwmijpnq.pdf

PYTHIA 6.4 Physics and Manual

We propose a method for matching the next-to-leading order (NLO) calculation of a given QCD process with a parton shower Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. The method has the following features: fully exclusive events are generated, with hadronization according to the MC model; total exclusive rates are accurate to NLO; NLO results for distributions are recovered upon expansion in ?s; hard emissions are treated as in NLO computations while soft/collinear emissions are handled by the MC simulation, with the same logarithmic accuracy as the MC; and matching between the hard- and soft/collinear-emission regions is smooth. A fraction of events with negative weight is generated, but unweighting remains possible with reasonable efficiency. The method is clarified using a simple toy model, and illustrated by application to the hadroproduction of W+W? pairs.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1126-6708/2002/06/029/pdf

Matching NLO QCD computations and parton shower simulations

HERWIG is a general-purpose Monte Carlo event generator, which includes the simulation of hard lepton-lepton, lepton-hadron and hadron-hadron scattering and soft hadron-hadron collisions in one package. It uses the parton-shower approach for initial- and final-state QCD radiation, including colour coherence effects and azimuthal correlations both within and between jets. This article updates the description of HERWIG published in 1992, emphasising the new features incorporated since then. These include, in particular, the matching of first-order matrix elements with parton showers, a more correct treatment of heavy quark decays, and a wide range of new processes, including many predicted by the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, with the option of R-parity violation. At the same time we offer a brief review of the physics underlying HERWIG, together with details of the input and control parameters and the output data, to provide a self-contained guide for prospective users of the program.

/pdf/herwig-6-an-event-generator-for-hadron-emission-reactions-2854fafdiq.pdf

HERWIG 6: an event generator for hadron emission reactions with interfering gluons (including supersymmetric processes)

In this paper we describe Herwig++ version 2.3, a general-purpose Monte Carlo event generator for the simulation of hard lepton-lepton, lepton-hadron and hadron-hadron collisions. A number of important hard scattering processes are available, together with an interface via the Les Houches Accord to specialized matrix element generators for additional processes. The simulation of Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics includes a range of models and allows new models to be added by encoding the Feynman rules of the model. The parton-shower approach is used to simulate initial- and final-state QCD radiation, including colour coherence effects, with special emphasis on the correct description of radiation from heavy particles. The underlying event is simulated using an eikonal multiple parton-parton scattering model. The formation of hadrons from the quarks and gluons produced in the parton shower is described using the cluster hadronization model. Hadron decays are simulated using matrix elements, where possible including spin correlations and off-shell effects. Comment: 153 pages, program and additional information available from http://projects.hepforge.org/herwig . Updated description to Herwig++ version 2.3 and added one author

/pdf/herwig-physics-and-manual-4sr09wbmek.pdf

Herwig++ Physics and Manual

This paper presents a new event generator, ALPGEN, dedicated to the study of multiparton hard processes in hadronic collisions. The code performs, at the leading order in QCD and EW interactions, the calculation of the exact matrix elements for a large set of parton-level processes of interest in the study of the Tevatron and LHC data. The current version of the code describes the following final states: (W→f')Q+N jets (Q being a heavy quark, and f = l,q), with N ≤ 4;(Z/γ*→f)Q+N jets (f = l,ν), with N ≤ 4; W→f')+charm+N jets (f = l,q,N ≤ 5;W→f')+N jets (f = l,q and Z/γ*→f)+N jets (f = l,ν), with N ≤ 6; nW+mZ+lH+N jets, with n+m+l+N ≤ 8, N ≤ 3, including all 2-fermion decay modes of W and Z bosons, with spin correlations; Q+N jets, with t→bf' decays and relative spin correlations included where relevant, and N ≤ 6; QQ''+N jets, with Q and Q' heavy quarks (possibly equal) and N ≤ 4; HQ+N jets, with t→bf' decays and relative spin correlations included where relevant and N ≤ 4; N jets, with N ≤ 6. Parton-level events are generated, providing full information on their colour and flavour structure, enabling the evolution of the partons into fully hadronised final states.

/pdf/alpgen-a-generator-for-hard-multiparton-processes-in-4tuthlh5y0.pdf

I.G. Knowles

Papers

HERWIG 5.1 - a Monte Carlo event generator for simulating hadron emission reactions with interfering gluons