A practical guide to event generation for prompt photon production

TL;DR

This paper reviews methods for simulating prompt photon production at hadron colliders using Sherpa, introduces a merged NLO simulation of gamma-gamma processes, and compares results with ATLAS data.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive simulation approach including fragmentation and introduces a novel merged NLO gamma-gamma and gamma-gamma+jet simulation.

Findings

Merged NLO simulation agrees with ATLAS measurements

Enhanced simulation accuracy for prompt photon processes

Provides a practical guide for event generation in photon production

Abstract

The production of prompt photons is one of the most relevant scattering processes studied at hadron-hadron colliders in recent years. This article will give an overview of the different approaches used to simulate prompt photon production in the Sherpa event generator framework. Special emphasis is placed on a complete simulation of this process including fragmentation configurations. As a novel application a merged simulation of $\gamma\gamma$ and $\gamma\gamma+$jet production at NLO accuracy is presented and compared to measurements from the ATLAS experiment.