Measurement of the Cross Section for Prompt Isolated Diphoton Production in p\bar p Collisions at \sqrt s = 1.96 TeV

TL;DR

This paper measures the cross section of prompt isolated diphoton production in proton-antiproton collisions at 1.96 TeV, comparing results with various QCD predictions to evaluate their accuracy.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed measurement of diphoton production cross sections at Tevatron energies and compares multiple theoretical models with experimental data.

Findings

NLO calculations match most data features

Parton shower models become competitive with NLO when including photon radiation

Experimental data helps refine QCD predictions for diphoton production

Abstract

This article reports a measurement of the cross section of prompt isolated photon pair production in pp collisions at a total energy \sqrt{s} = 1.96 TeV using data of 5.36 fb-1 integrated luminosity collected with the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. The measured cross section, differential in basic kinematic variables, is compared with three perturbative QCD predictions, a leading order (LO) parton shower calculation and two next-to-leading order (NLO) calculations. The NLO calculations reproduce most aspects of the data. By including photon radiation from quarks before and after hard scattering, the parton shower prediction becomes competitive with the NLO predictions.