Understanding the Impact of Pythia Hadronization in Top Quark Mass Determinations at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the parameters of the Pythia 8 hadronization model influence the precision of top quark mass measurements via B-hadron observables at the LHC, aiming to improve accuracy beyond 0.5%.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the sensitivity of top quark mass measurements to Pythia 8 hadronization parameters and discusses observables for constraining these parameters.

Findings

Hadronization parameters significantly affect top mass measurements.

Certain B-hadron observables can constrain hadronization models effectively.

Understanding hadronization models is crucial for high-precision top mass determination.

Abstract

Most of the methods to measure the top quark mass suffer from the jet energy scaling in achieving better precision. As a way to circumvent this issue, the study of $B$-hadron observables is motivated. While they do not involve such an issue, understanding underlying hadronization models is a key to achieve $\sim 0.5\%$ precision or better. In this presentation, we discuss the impact of the hadronization model parameters - for example, implemented in Pythia 8 - on precision measurements of the top quark mass through $B$-hadron observables. We study the sensitivity of the top quark mass to relevant hadronization and showering parameters, followed by a discussion on observables to be used for constraining the hadronization and showering parameters.