# References

LU TP 99–26

RAL-TR-1999-065

hep-ph/9909346

September 1999

PYTHIA and HERWIG   
for Linear Collider Physics<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1To appear in the Proceedings of the International Workshop on Linear Colliders, Sitges (Barcelona), Spain, April 28 – May 5, 1999   
Torbjörn Sjöstrand<sup>2</sup><sup>2</sup>2torbjorn@thep.lu.se   
Department of Theoretical Physics,   
Lund University, Lund, Sweden   
and

Michael H. Seymour<sup>3</sup><sup>3</sup>3M.Seymour@rl.ac.uk   
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton,   
Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 0QX, U.K.   

Abstract   
An overview is given of general-purpose event generators, especially Pythia and HERWIG. The current status is summarized, some recent physics improvements are described, and planned future projects are outlined. 

In order to produce events that can be used for Linear Collider physics and detector studies, the structure of the basic generation process is   
1) selection of the hard subprocess kinematics,   
2) resonance decays that (more or less) form part of the hard subprocess (such as $`W`$, $`Z`$, $`t`$ or $`h`$),   
3) evolution of QCD parton showers (or, alternatively, the use of higher-order matrix elements),   
4) hadronization, and   
5) normal decays (of hadrons and $`\tau `$’s mainly).   
Additional aspects, of interest for linear colliders, include   
6) beamstrahlung (often handled by an interface to CIRCE ),   
7) initial-state QED radiation, e.g. formulated in shower language,   
8) the hadronic behaviour of photons (involving topics such as the subdivision into direct and resolved photons, VMD and anomalous ones, parton distributions of real and virtual photons, initial-state QCD radiation, beam remnants of resolved photons and even the possibility of multiple interactions in those remnants), and   
9) QCD interconnection effects, e.g. modeled by colour rearrangement and Bose–Einstein .   
Finally, since a chain is never stronger than its weakest link, one must add   
10) the forgotten or unexpected.

The historical reason for developing general-purpose generators has often been an interest in QCD physics: initial- and final-state cascades, hadronization, underlying events, and so on. However, once these tools have been developed for simple processes such as $`\gamma ^{}/Z^0`$ production, their generalization to other processes appears a natural task. There exists three commonly used general-purpose generators: Pythia , HERWIG  and ISAJET . Their main limitation is that normally only leading-order processes are included, with higher-order QCD and QED corrections included by showers, but no weak corrections at all. Furthermore, the nonperturbative QCD sector is not solved, so hadronization aspects are based on models rather than on theory.

Over the years, a long list of physics processes have been added to the programs. These cover topics such as hard and soft QCD, heavy flavours, DIS and $`\gamma \gamma `$, electroweak production of $`\gamma ^{}/Z^0`$ and $`W^\pm `$ (singly or in pairs), production of a light or a heavy Standard Model Higgs, or of various Higgs states e.g. in Supersymmetric (SUSY) models, SUSY particle production (sfermions, gauginos, etc.), technicolor, new gauge bosons, compositeness, leptoquarks, and so on. The most basic processes are included in all the generators, while the selection diverges for exotic physics. Even when a process formally is the same, generators may be based on different theory frameworks (e.g. calculation of SUSY parameters) or approximation schemes, and are thus not expected to agree completely with each other. Comparisons between several generators thus are helpful to assess uncertainties (and, of course, also to find bugs).

The Pythia 6.1 program was released in March 1997, based on a merger of Jetset 7.4, Pythia 5.7 and SPythia . Main authors are T. Sjöstrand and S. Mrenna. New subversions are released once every few months — the current one is 6.129, with a size of about 49 000 lines of code. The code itself, including manuals and sample main programs, can be found on   
http://www.thep.lu.se/$``$torbjorn/Pythia.html.   
Relative to previous versions, the main news in Pythia 6.1 are the transition to double precision throughout and the new treatment of supersymmetric processes and particles. Also many other processes have been added, e.g. for Higgs and technicolor. Colour rearrangement options for $`W^+W^{}`$ are now included in the code, and the Bose–Einstein routine has been expanded with many new options. A new machinery is being built up for real and virtual photon fluxes and cross sections . An alternative description of popcorn baryon production is available . New standard interfaces are available that should ease the task of matching to external generators of two, four and six fermions. Among other points, of less relevance for $`e^+e^{}`$, one may note the addition of QED radiation off an incoming muon, newer parton distributions, and an energy-dependent $`p_{\mathrm{min}}`$ for multiple interactions.

The current HERWIG 5.9 is from July 1996, and has a size of about 21 400 lines. Authors are G. Marchesini, B.R. Webber, G. Abbiendi, I.G. Knowles, M.H. Seymour and L. Stanco. Code, manuals and related programs may be found on   
http://hepwww.rl.ac.uk/theory/seymour/herwig/.   
The new version 6.1 is just about to be released, with G. Corcella, S. Moretti, K. Odagiri and P. Richardson added to the list of collaborators. The main new improvement is the introduction of supersymmetric processes within a general MSSM framework, so far only for hadron collisions, however. Mass and decay spectra are not generated intrinsically; instead they are read from a data file, e.g. generated by ISAJET/ISASUSY. All $`R`$-parity conserving $`22`$ sparticle production subprocesses are available and, unlike Pythia and ISAJET, also all resonant $`R`$-parity violating $`22`$ subprocesses and decays. Sparton showering is not yet included. Most resonances decay isotropically, i.e. spin correlations are not systematically included. Among other news one may note a comprehensively expanded set of $`21`$, $`22`$ and $`23`$ Higgs production subprocesses. An $`e^+e^{}4`$ jets matrix-element option has been added, the JIMMY generator for multiparton scattering has been incorporated and improved, the treatment of $`\gamma ^{}\gamma ^{}`$ and $`\gamma `$ remnants improved, and beamstrahlung included by an interface to CIRCE.

Generator progress is in many directions, and the growth is largely organic. One main theme in recent times, that will continue to be of importance, is the gradual improvement of the matching between higher-order matrix-element information and the parton-shower language. This is required to obtain an accurate description of event properties, since each approach has its advantages and disadvantages: the former is favoured for the emission of a few widely separated partons, while the latter is likely to do better for multiple emissions at small separations.

One example is the improvement of the description of initial-state photon radiation in single-$`\gamma ^{}/Z^0`$ production in Pythia, which is a by-product of the study of $`W^\pm /\gamma ^{}/Z^0`$ production in hadron colliders . The basic idea is to map the kinematics between the parton-shower and matrix-element descriptions, and to find a correction factor that can be applied to hard emissions in the shower so as to bring agreement with the matrix-element expression. Some simple algebra shows that, with the Pythia shower kinematics definitions, the two emission rates disagree by a factor

$$R_{ee\gamma Z}(\widehat{s},\widehat{t})=\frac{(\mathrm{d}\widehat{\sigma }/\mathrm{d}\widehat{t})_{\mathrm{ME}}}{(\mathrm{d}\widehat{\sigma }/\mathrm{d}\widehat{t})_{\mathrm{PS}}}=\frac{\widehat{t}^2+\widehat{u}^2+2m_Z^2\widehat{s}}{\widehat{s}^2+m_Z^4},$$

where $`\widehat{s}`$, $`\widehat{t}`$ and $`\widehat{u}`$ are the standard Mandelstam variables and $`m_Z`$ represents the (actual) mass of the $`s`$-channel resonance. This factor is always between $`1/2`$ and 1. The shower can therefore be improved in two ways, relative to the old description. Firstly, the maximum virtuality of emissions is raised from $`Q_{\mathrm{max}}^2m_Z^2`$ to $`Q_{\mathrm{max}}^2=s`$, i.e. the shower is allowed to populate the full phase space. Secondly, the emission rate for the first (which normally also is the hardest) emission on each side is corrected by the factor $`R(\widehat{s},\widehat{t})`$ above, so as to bring agreement with the matrix-element rate in the hard-emission region.

Another example of a shower improvement is the description of gluon radiation in top decay in HERWIG . The showering of top decay is done in the top rest frame, where the $`W`$ and $`b`$ are going out back-to-back. In this frame, the gluon emission off the $`b`$ should be smoothly suppressed at large angles relative to the $`b`$ direction, but in HERWIG this is approximated by a sharp step at 90. Thus the $`W`$ hemisphere is left completely empty of gluons, while the $`b`$ one is fully populated. In this kind of “dead come approximation”, the total amount of radiation is about right, but the angular distribution can be badly wrong. The HERWIG improvement consists of two parts. A hard correction is applied in the “dead” region, where tree-level matrix elements are used to populate it (corresponding to roughly 3% of the decays). A soft correction is applied to the populated region, by a reweighting of emissions, to ensure that the kinematical distribution of the hardest emission in the parton shower agrees with the tree-level matrix elements . These corrections can be very important, especially close to threshold . Matrix-element corrections to top production can also be important, and work is here in progress.

Finally, a word about the future. Both Pythia and HERWIG continue to be developed and supported. On the physics side, there is a continuous need to increase and improve the support given to different physics scenarios, new and old, and many areas of the general QCD machinery for parton showers and hadronization may require further improvements. On the technical side, the main challenge is a transition from Fortran to more modern computer languages, in practice meaning C++. There are several arguments for such a transition. One is that the major labs, such as SLAC, Fermilab and CERN have decided to discontinue Fortran support and go over to C++ as main language. Another is that C++ offers an educational and professional continuity for students: they may know it before they begin physics, and they can use it after they quit. For experts, C++ is a better programming language. For the rest of us, user-friendly interfaces should still make life easier.

Studies have now begun. The Pythia 7 project was formally started in January 1998, with L. Lönnblad as main responsible. What exists today is a strategy document , and code for the event record and the particle object. The particle data and other data base handling is in progress, as is the event generation handler structure. The first piece of physics, the string fragmentation scheme, is being implemented by M. Bertini. The hope its to have a “proof of concept” version soon, and much of the current Pythia functionality up and running by the end of 2000. It will, however, take some further time after that to provide a program that is both more and better than the current Pythia version. HERWIG is currently lagging behind, but a plan has been formulated for a C++ version that would simultaneously offer a significantly improved physics content. Recently the PPARC in the U.K. approved an application for two postdoc-level positions devoted full-time to this project, which therefore will start soon.

A copy of the transparencies of this talk, including all the figures not shown here (for space reasons) may be found on   
http://www.thep.lu.se/$``$torbjorn/talks/sitges99mc.ps.   
The talk by F. Paige contains complementary information on SUSY simulation .