Initial state radiation in the Herwig 7 angular-ordered parton shower

We study the simulation of initial-state radiation in angular-ordered parton showers in order to investigate how different interpretations of the ordering variable affect the logarithmic accuracy of such showers. This also enables us to implement a recoil scheme which is consistent between final-state and initial-state radiation. We present optimal values of the strong coupling and intrinsic transverse momentum to be used in each version of the parton shower, tuned using Z0-boson production at the LHC at 7 TeV. With these tuned showers, we perform a phenomenological study of the Drell-Yan process at several centre-of-mass energies.

Transverse-momentum resummation for boson plus jet production at hadron colliders

We consider the associated production of a vector or Higgs boson with a jet in hadronic collisions. When the transverse momentum $$q_T$$ q T of the boson-jet system is much smaller than its invariant mass Q, the QCD perturbative expansion is affected by large logarithmic terms that must be resummed to all orders. We discuss the all-order resummation structure of the logarithmically enhanced contributions up to next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. Resummation is performed at the differential level with respect to the kinematical variables of the boson-jet system. Soft-parton radiation produces azimuthal correlations that are fully accounted for in our framework. We present explicit analytical results for the resummation coefficients up to next-to-leading order and next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy, that include the exact dependence on the jet radius.

N-jettiness in electroweak high-energy processes

We study N-jettiness in electroweak processes at extreme high energies, in which the mass of the weak gauge bosons can be regarded as small. The description of the scattering process such as e−e+ → μ−μ+ + X is similar to QCD. The incoming leptons emit initial-state radiation and the resultant particles, highly off-shell, participate in the hard scattering, which are expressed by the beam functions. After the hard scattering, the final- state leptons or leptonic jets are observed, described by the fragmenting jet functions or the jet functions respectively. At present, electroweak processes are prevailed by the processes induced by the strong interaction, but they will be relevant at future e−e+ colliders at high energy. The main difference between QCD and electroweak processes is that the initial- and final-state particles should appear in the form of hadrons, that is, color singlets in QCD, while there can be weak nonsinglets as well in electroweak interactions. We analyze the factorization theorems for the N-jettiness in e−e+ → μ−μ+ + X, and compute the factorized parts to next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. To simplify the comparison with QCD, we only consider the SU(2)W gauge interaction, and the extension to the Standard Model is straightforward. Put it in a different way, it corresponds to an imaginary world in which colored particles can be observed in QCD, and the richer structure of effective theories is probed. Various nonzero nonsinglet matrix elements are interwoven to produce the factorized results, in contrast to QCD in which there are only contributions from the singlets. Another distinct feature is that the rapidity divergence is prevalent in the contributions from weak nonsinglets due to the different group theory factors between the real and virtual corrections. We verify that the rapidity divergence cancels in all the contributions with a different number of nonsinglet channels. We also consider the renormalization group evolution of each factorized part to resum large logarithms, which are distinct from QCD.

Heptagon functions and seven-gluon amplitudes in multi-Regge kinematics

We compute all 2 → 5 gluon scattering amplitudes in planar $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 4 super-Yang-Mills theory in the multi-Regge limit that is sensitive to the non-trivial (“long”) Regge cut. We provide the amplitudes through four loops and to all logarithmic accuracy at leading power, in terms of single-valued multiple polylogarithms of two variables. To obtain these results, we leverage the function-level results for the amplitudes in the Steinmann cluster bootstrap. To high powers in the series expansion in the two variables, our results agree with the recently conjectured all-order central emission vertex used in the Fourier-Mellin representation of amplitudes in multi-Regge kinematics. Our results therefore provide a resummation of the Fourier-Mellin residues into single-valued polylogarithms, and constitute an important cross-check between the bootstrap approach and the all-orders multi-Regge proposal.

Grooming at the cusp: all-orders predictions for the transition region of jet groomers

Jet grooming has emerged as a necessary and vital tool for mitigating contamination radiation in jets. The additional restrictions on emissions imposed by the groomer can result in non-smooth behavior of resulting fixed-order distributions of observables measured on groomed jets. As a concrete example, we study the cusp in the hemisphere mass distribution of e+e−→ hadrons events groomed with soft drop. We identify the leading emissions that contribute in the region about the cusp and formulate an all-orders factorization theorem that describes how the cusp is resolved through arbitrary strongly-ordered soft and collinear emissions. The factorization theorem exhibits numerous novel features such as contributions from collinear modes that can cross hemisphere boundaries as well as requiring explicit subtraction of the limit in which resolved emissions become collinear to the hard core. We present resummation of the cusp region through next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy and describe how it can be matched with established factorization theorems that describe other groomed phase space regions.

Higgs-boson production in top-quark fragmentation

We compute the fragmentation functions for the production of a Higgs boson at $$ \mathcal{O} $$ O ($$ {y}_t^2 $$ y t 2 αs). As part of this calculation, the relevant splitting functions are also derived at the same perturbative order. Our results can be used to compute differential cross sections with arbitrary top-quark and Higgs-boson masses from massless calculations. They can also be used to resum logarithms of the form ln(pT/m) at large transverse momentum pT to next-to-leading-logarithmic accuracy by solving the DGLAP equations.

Hadronic decays of Higgs boson at NNLO matched with parton shower

We present predictions for hadronic decays of the Higgs boson at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in QCD matched with parton shower based on the POWHEG framework. Those include decays into bottom quarks with full bottom-quark mass dependence, light quarks, and gluons in the heavy top quark effective theory. Our calculations describe exclusive decays of the Higgs boson with leading logarithmic accuracy in the Sudakov region and next-to-leading order (NLO) accuracy matched with parton shower in the three-jet region, with normalizations fixed to the partial width at NNLO. We estimated remaining perturbative uncertainties taking typical event shape variables as an example and demonstrated the need of future improvements on both parton shower and matrix element calculations. The calculations can be used immediately in evaluations of the physics performances of detector designs for future Higgs factories.

Spin correlations in final-state parton showers and jet observables

As part of a programme to develop parton showers with controlled logarithmic accuracy, we consider the question of collinear spin correlations within the PanScales family of parton showers. We adapt the well-known Collins–Knowles spin-correlation algorithm to PanScales antenna and dipole showers, using an approach with similarities to that taken by Richardson and Webster. To study the impact of spin correlations, we develop Lund-declustering based observables that are sensitive to spin-correlation effects both within and between jets and extend the MicroJets collinear single-logarithmic resummation code to include spin correlations. Together with a 3-point energy correlation observable proposed recently by Chen, Moult and Zhu, this provides a powerful set of constraints for validating the logarithmic accuracy of our shower results. The new observables and their resummation further open the pathway to phenomenological studies of these important quantum mechanical effects.

On factorisation schemes for the electron parton distribution functions in QED

The electron, positron, and photon Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs) of the unpolarised electron have recently been computed at the next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy in QED, by adopting the $$ \overline{\mathrm{MS}} $$ MS ¯ factorisation scheme. We present here analogous results, obtained by working in a different framework that is inspired by the so-called DIS scheme. We derive analytical solutions relevant to the large-z region, where we show that the behaviour of the PDFs depends in a dramatic way on whether running-α effects are included to all orders, as opposed to being truncated to some fixed order. By means of suitable initial and evolution conditions, next-to-leading logarithmic accurate PDFs are obtained whose large-z functional forms are identical to those of their leading logarithmic counterparts.