$\textsf{Xsec}$: the cross-section evaluation code

TL;DR

The paper introduces xt, a software tool that uses machine learning regression to rapidly evaluate higher-order cross-sections in particle physics, significantly speeding up parameter scans.

Contribution

It presents a novel machine learning-based approach for fast cross-section evaluation, trained on pre-generated data, applicable to complex models like supersymmetry.

Findings

Provides NLO cross-sections for MSSM at the LHC in under a second.

Calculates regression and theoretical error estimates.

Demonstrates generalizability to other processes with sufficient training data.

Abstract

The evaluation of higher-order cross-sections is an important component in the search for new physics, both at hadron colliders and elsewhere. For most new physics processes of interest, total cross-sections are known at next-to-leading order (NLO) in the strong coupling $\alpha_s$, and often beyond, via either higher-order terms at fixed powers of $\alpha_s$, or multi-emission resummation. However, the computation time for such higher-order cross-sections is prohibitively expensive, and precludes efficient evaluation in parameter-space scans beyond two dimensions. Here we describe the software tool $\textsf{xsec}$, which allows for fast evaluation of cross-sections based on the use of machine-learning regression, using distributed Gaussian processes trained on a pre-generated sample of parameter points. This first version of the code provides all NLO Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model strong-production cross-sections at the LHC, for individual flavour final states, evaluated in a fraction of a second. Moreover, it calculates regression errors, as well as estimates of errors from higher-order contributions, from uncertainties in the parton distribution functions, and from the value of $\alpha_s$. While we focus on a specific phenomenological model of supersymmetry, the method readily generalises to any process where it is possible to generate a sufficient training sample.