Comparisons of the Monte Carlo programs HORACE and WINHAC for single-W-boson production at hadron colliders

TL;DR

This paper compares two Monte Carlo event generators, HORACE and WINHAC, for simulating single-W-boson production at hadron colliders, analyzing their agreement and effects of quark masses at the LHC.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of HORACE and WINHAC for W-boson production, including the impact of quark masses, enhancing validation of simulation tools.

Findings

Good agreement between HORACE and WINHAC at parton and hadron levels

Identified sources of differences in simulation results

Assessed effects of non-zero quark masses on observables

Abstract

We present the comparisons of two independent Monte Carlo event generators, HORACE and WINHAC, for single-W-boson production in hadronic collisions with multiphoton effects in leptonic W decays. These comparisons were performed first at the parton level with fixed quark-beams energy, and then at the hadron level for proton-proton collisions at the LHC. In general, a good agreement between the two programs has been found. Possible sources of differences in some of the presented results are discussed. We also present and discuss the effects of including non-zero quark masses for the main single-W-boson observables at the LHC.