Heavy particles at the LHC: NLO predictions & automated tools

by Dr David Lopez-Val (Institut fuer Theoretische Physik, Universitaet Heidelberg)

Friday 28 Sept 2012, 14:30 → 15:30 Europe/Brussels

Large seminar room (IIHE (ULB-VUB))

abstract: With the LHC close to complete its 8 TeV run, the quest for new physics at the TeV scale is already at the spotlight of the current experimental searches. In these endeavour, a major call to particle phenomenologists is to develope automated tools that provide fast, flexible and accurate predictions for the major new physics discovery doorways. MadGolem is an example of such an automated tool. It is conceived as an independent add-on to MadGraph/MadEvent, and automates the calculation of next-to-leading (NLO) cross sections and distributions for generic heavy particle pair production beyond the Standard Model (BSM). In this talk we will expand on both the physical and technical motivations to automate NLO computations. We will review the different steps involved in the calculation of a NLO cross section, and will present how these are carried out and implemented in MadGolem. We will briefly describe the internal architecture of the code and the user's interface, illustrating how the tool performs in practice. Finally, we will present a number of sample applications to BSM heavy particle production at the LHC.