SciPost Physics Core (Feb 2023)

A standard convention for particle-level Monte Carlo event-variation weights

  • Enrico Bothmann, Andy Buckley, Christian Gütschow, Stefan Prestel, Marek Schönherr, Peter Skands, Jeppe R. Andersen, Saptaparna Bhattacharya, Jonathan Butterworth, Gurpreet Singh Chahal, Louie Corpe, Leif Gellersen, Matthew Gignac, Stefan Höche, Deepak Kar, Frank Krauss, Jan Kretzschmar, Leif Lönnblad, Josh McFayden, Andreas Papaefstathiou, Simon Plätzer, Steffen Schumann, Michael H. Seymour, Frank Siegert, Andrzej Siódmok

DOI
https://doi.org/10.21468/SciPostPhysCore.6.1.007
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 6, no. 1
p. 007

Abstract

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Streams of event weights in particle-level Monte Carlo event generators are a convenient and immensely CPU-efficient approach to express systematic uncertainties in phenomenology calculations, providing systematic variations on the nominal prediction within a single event sample. But the lack of a common standard for labelling these variation streams across different tools has proven to be a major limitation for event-processing tools and analysers alike. Here we propose a well-defined, extensible community standard for the naming, ordering, and interpretation of weight streams that will serve as the basis for semantically correct parsing and combination of such variations in both theoretical and experimental studies.