LHE tree structure

Asked by Josh McFayden

Hi,

I have a naive question about the truth record for some ttbar+photon events we have generated with a process like:
generate p p > t t~ > l+ vl b s c~ b~ a

The LHE files contain examples like this:

13 1 0.8345091E-03 0.1245473E+03 0.7555786E-02 0.1238767E+00
       21 -1 0 0 ...etc.
       21 -1 0 0 ...etc.
        6 2 1 2 ...etc.
       24 2 3 3 ...etc.
       -6 2 1 2 ...etc.
      -24 2 5 5 ...etc.
      -13 1 4 4 ...etc.
       14 1 4 4 ...etc.
        5 1 3 3 ...etc.
        3 1 6 6 ...etc.
       -4 1 6 6 ...etc.
       -5 1 5 5 ...etc.
       22 1 6 6 ...etc.

where the photon appears to be radiated from the W boson.

There are of course also diagrams where the photon is radiated from the leptons from the leptonic W decay, but here is where I start to get confused.... in a 5k event LHE file there is not a single case in the event record where this is shown. Specifically, I would expect to see something like this:

13 1 0.8345091E-03 0.1245473E+03 0.7555786E-02 0.1238767E+00
       21 -1 0 0 ...etc.
       21 -1 0 0 ...etc.
        6 2 1 2 ...etc.
       24 2 3 3 ...etc.
       -6 2 1 2 ...etc.
      -24 2 5 5 ...etc.
      -13 1 4 4 ...etc.
       14 1 4 4 ...etc.
        5 1 3 3 ...etc.
        3 1 6 6 ...etc.
       -4 1 6 6 ...etc.
       -5 1 5 5 ...etc.
       22 1 7 6 ...etc.

(note the 7 in the last line to indicate radiation from the -13 rather than -24)

Is this expected? I would have thought that the cross section would be comparable for events with photon radiation from the W and photon radiation from the leptons, but maybe that's completely wrong? :-)

Or perhaps this is a deliberate convention in the event record?

Any insight would be much appreciated!

Best,

Josh

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Olivier Mattelaer (olivier-mattelaer) said :
#1

Hi,

Yes this is related to the convention for the lhe file.
Only on-shell intermediate particle are written into the records since this information is going to be crucial for the parton-shower.
Since your lepton would be off-shell, it is not written into the records and the associated photon will "seem" to originate from the first onshell particle of the associated FeynMan Diagram. (so in this case, likely to be the W.

Cheers,

Olivier

FAQ #2173: “Intermediate Boson missing from events in LHE output file”.

Revision history for this message
Josh McFayden (mcfayden) said :
#2

Ah yes of course. I knew it that was the case for e.g. pp > l+l-, somehow I forgot that the leptons would be off-shell here... :-)
Thanks Olivier!