Release Note -- VBFNLO 3.0

TL;DR

VBFNLO 3.0 is a significantly enhanced Monte Carlo program for simulating various vector boson and Higgs production processes at NLO, with new interfaces, processes, unitarization, and parallelization features.

Contribution

The paper introduces Version 3.0 of VBFNLO, adding new processes, an interface for all processes, a modified unitarization procedure, and parallelization, representing substantial improvements over previous versions.

Findings

Added new vector boson scattering processes at NLO.

Implemented BLHA interface for all processes.

Parallelized code using OpenMPI.

Abstract

VBFNLO is a flexible parton level Monte Carlo program for the simulation of vector boson fusion (VBF), QCD-induced single and double vector boson production plus two jets, and double and triple vector boson production (plus jet) in hadronic collisions at next-to-leading order (NLO) in the strong coupling constant, as well as Higgs boson plus two and three jet production via gluon fusion at the one-loop level. For the new version -- Version 3.0 -- several major enhancements have been included. An interface according to the Binoth Les Houches Accord (BLHA) has been added for all VBF and di/tri-boson processes including fully leptonic decays. For all dimension-8 operators affecting vector boson scattering (VBS) processes, a modified T-matrix unitarization procedure has been implemented. Several new production processes have been added, namely the VBS $Z\gamma jj$ and $\gamma \gamma jj$ processes at NLO, $\gamma \gamma jj $, $WWj$ and $ZZj$ production at NLO including the loop-induced gluon-fusion contributions and the gluon-fusion one-loop induced $\Phi jjj$ ($\Phi$ is a CP-even or CP-odd scalar boson) process at LO, retaining the full top-mass dependence. Finally, the code has been parallelized using OpenMPI.