Event Generation at the Large Hadron Collider

Matthew Park

Contents
1 Introduction

2 MadGraph

3 Pythia

Chapter 1

Introduction

Figure 1.1: A simple caption

At the Large Hadron Collider, protons collide to produce a set of particles:
pp X
To calculate the inclusive cross section of the process:
1. Determine contributing subprocesses. The proton consists of valence quarks {ud}, sea quarks
csbt}, and gluons {g}. Conservation of quantum numbers (electric charge, colour charge, etc.)
{udcsbt
ud
determines which pairs of these elementary particles ab can interact to produce X.
2. Determine the matrix element for each subprocess. The matrix element is obtained by evaluating
the Feynman Diagram of the subprocess according to Feynman Rules of the Standard Model (or some other
model that we may be interested in).
2

3. Perform phase space integral for each subprocess. The total cross section of the subprocess
ab X is given by
Z
abX (
s, ...)fa (x1 )fb (x2 )dx1 dx2 dF S ,
(1) differential cross section of the hard process, (2) parton distribution functions of a and b, (3) phase space
integral.
4. Sum the individual cross sections. The total cross section of the process pp X is given by
total =

N
X

i=1

where i is the total cross section of the ith sub process.

Steps 1, 2, and 4 may be tedious, but are straightforward. Step 4, on the other hand, can be very challenging
due to the integration over the high-dimension phase space of very peaked functions. We need a numerical
method to calculate the integral.
Use the Meavn Value Theorem and the Riemann Sum Definition of integral:
Z

f (x)dx = IN = (b a)

I=
a

Z
V = (b a)

N
1 X
f (xi )
N i=1

[f (x)]2 dx I 2 = VN = (b a)2

N
1 X
2
[f (x)]2 IN
N i=1

where IN I, VN V as N . This is the basic principle of the Monte Carlo Integration.

In principle, we can now calculate the cross section. What about generating individual events?
Actually, the process of performing the integral can include generating events, by the Acceptance-Rejection
Method. Remember that the integral is over the matrix element and the available phase space of a certain
process. So each point within the bounds of the function can be viewed as an event. The method is as
follows:
0. Choose an approximating function, fmax (x) f (x).
1. Pick a xi .
2. Pick a yi .
2. Pick a 0 yi fmax (xi ).
3. (a) If yi f (x), accept the event.
4. (b) If f (x) yi fmax (xi ), reject the event.
Execution of this algorithm for i = 1, ..., N will give us the cross section and event generation.

Chapter 2

MadGraph
MadGraph

Chapter 3

Pythia

Chapter 4