Carola F. Berger

An Automated Implementation of On-Shell Methods for One-Loop Amplitudes

We present the first results from BlackHat, an automated C++ program for calculating one-loop amplitudes. The program implements the unitarity method and on-shell recursion to construct amplitudes. As input to the calculation, it uses compact analytic formulae for tree amplitudes for four-dimensional helicity states. The program performs all related computations numerically. We make use of recently developed on-shell methods for evaluating coefficients of loop integrals, introducing a discrete Fourier projection as a means of improving efficiency and numerical stability. We illustrate the numerical stability of our approach by computing and analyzing six-, seven-, and eight-gluon amplitudes in QCD and comparing against previously obtained analytic results.

Precise Predictions for W + 4 Jet Production at the Large Hadron Collider

We present the next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD results for W+4-jet production at hadron colliders. This is the first hadron-collider process with five final-state objects to be computed at NLO. It represents an important background to many searches for new physics at the energy frontier. Total cross sections, as well as distributions in the jet transverse momenta, are provided for the initial LHC energy of √s = 7  TeV. We use a leading-color approximation, known to be accurate to 3% for W production with fewer jets. The calculation uses the BLACKHAT library along with the SHERPA package.

Next-to-leading order QCD predictions for W + 3-jet distributions at hadron colliders

We present next-to-leading order QCD predictions for a variety of distributions in W + 3-jet production at both the Tevatron and the Large Hadron Collider. We include all subprocesses and incorporate the decay of the W boson into leptons. Our results are in excellent agreement with existing Tevatron data and provide the first quantitatively precise next-to-leading order predictions for the LHC. We include all terms in an expansion in the number of colors, confirming that the specific leading-color approximation used in our previous study is accurate to within three percent. The dependence of the cross section on renormalization and factorization scales is reduced significantly with respect to a leading-order calculation. We study different dynamical scale choices, and find that the total transverse energy is significantly better than choices used in previous phenomenological studies. We compute the one-loop matrix elements using on-shell methods, as numerically implemented in the BlackHat code. The remaining parts of the calculation, including generation of the real-emission contributions and integration over phase space, are handled by the SHERPA package.

Supersymmetry Without Prejudice

We begin an exploration of the physics associated with the general CP-conserving MSSM with Minimal Flavor Violation, the pMSSM. The 19 soft SUSY breaking parameters in this scenario are chosen so as to satisfy all existing experimental and theoretical constraints assuming that the WIMP is a conventional thermal relic, i.e., the lightest neutralino. We scan this parameter space twice using both flat and log priors for the soft SUSY breaking mass parameters and compare the results which yield similar conclusions. Detailed constraints from both LEP and the Tevatron searches play a particularly important role in obtaining our final model samples. We find that the pMSSM leads to a much broader set of predictions for the properties of the SUSY partners as well as for a number of experimental observables than those found in any of the conventional SUSY breaking scenarios such as mSUGRA. This set of models can easily lead to atypical expectations for SUSY signals at the LHC.

Precise predictions for w+3 jet production at hadron colliders.

We report on the first next-to-leading order QCD computation of W+3-jet production in hadronic collisions including all partonic subprocesses. We compare the results with data from the Tevatron and find excellent agreement. The required one-loop matrix elements are computed using on-shell methods, implemented in a numerical program, BlackHat. We use the SHERPA package to generate the real-emission contributions and to integrate the various contributions over phase space. We use a leading-color (large-N_{c}) approximation for the virtual part, which we confirm in W+1, 2-jet production to be valid to within three percent.

Bootstrapping one-loop QCD amplitudes with general helicities

The recently developed on-shell bootstrap for computing one-loop amplitudes in non-supersymmetric theories such as QCD combines the unitarity method with loop-level on-shell recursion. For generic helicity configurations, the recursion relations may involve undetermined contributions from non-standard complex singularities or from large values of the shift parameter. Here we develop a strategy for sidestepping difficulties through use of pairs of recursion relations. To illustrate the strategy, we present sets of recursion relations needed for obtaining n-gluon amplitudes in QCD. We give a recursive solution for the one-loop n-gluon QCD amplitudes with three or four color-adjacent gluons of negative helicity and the remaining ones of positive helicity. We provide an explicit analytic formula for the QCD amplitude A{sub 6;1}(1{sup -}, 2{sup -}, 3{sup -}, 4{sup +}, 5{sup +}, 6{sup +}), as well as numerical results for A{sub 7;1}(1{sup -}, 2{sup -}, 3{sup -}, 4{sup +}, 5{sup +}, 6{sup +}, 7{sup +}), A{sub 8;1}(1{sup -}, 2{sup -}, 3{sup -}, 4{sup +}, 5{sup +}, 6{sup +}, 7{sup +}, 8{sup +}), and A{sub 8;1}(1{sup -}, 2{sup -}, 3{sup -}, 4{sup -}, 5{sup +}, 6{sup +}, 7{sup +}, 8{sup +}). We expect the on-shell bootstrap approach to have widespread applications to phenomenological studies at colliders.

Higgs production with a central jet veto at NNLL+NNLO

A major ingredient in Higgs searches at the Tevatron and LHC is the elimination of backgrounds with jets. In current H → WW → ℓνℓν searches, jet algorithms are used to veto central jets to obtain a 0-jet sample, which is then analyzed to discover the Higgs signal. Imposing this tight jet veto induces large double logarithms which significantly modify the Higgs production cross section. These jet-veto logarithms are presently only accounted for at fixed order or with the leading-logarithmic summation from parton-shower Monte Carlos. Here we consider Higgs production with an inclusive event-shape variable for the jet veto, namely beam thrust

Next-to-leading order QCD predictions for Z,gamma^*+3-Jet distributions at the tevatron.

{\mathcal{T}_{\text{cm}}}

The number density of a charged relic

, which has a close correspondence with a traditional pT jet veto.

Higher orders in A(alpha(s))/[1-x]+ of nonsinglet partonic splitting functions

{\mathcal{T}_{\text{cm}}}