Towards NNLO+PS Matching with Sector Showers

TL;DR

This paper presents a new method for matching NNLO calculations with parton showers using sector antennas, implemented in the VINCIA shower within PYTHIA 8.3, to improve accuracy in leptonic collision simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel NNLO+PS matching technique using sector-antenna formalism, enabling fully-differential predictions with reduced negative weights.

Findings

Successful implementation in VINCIA antenna shower

Elimination of negative weights under certain conditions

Enhanced accuracy in leptonic collision simulations

Abstract

We outline a new technique for the fully-differential matching of final-state parton showers to NNLO calculations, focussing here on the simplest case of leptonic collisions with two final-state jets. The strategy is facilitated by working in the antenna formalism, making use of NNLO antenna subtraction on the fixed-order side and the sector-antenna framework on the shower side. As long as the combined real-virtual and double-real corrections do not overcompensate the real-emission term in the three-jet region, negative weights can be eliminated from the matching scheme. We describe the implementation of all necessary components in the VINCIA antenna shower in PYTHIA 8.3.