Dipartimento di Fisica

Descrizione del progetto

With the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) approaching its high-luminosity phase, and signals of possible new physics still eluding detection, extremely accurate predictions for Standard Model processes are mandatory to give a meaningful interpretation to the increasingly precise experimental data, and to identify potential subtle footprints of new fundamental phenomena. As strong interactions, described through Quantum ChromoDynamics (QCD), dominate the description of LHC processes, QCD perturbation theory must be pushed to its limits, and controlled with an unprecedented level of accuracy.

ADVANCE-QCD aims at improving the accuracy standard of perturbative QCD predictions for collider processes, by automating all process-independent ingredients of QCD calculations at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbative QCD, paving the way for higher-order extensions.

The project pursues its goals by:
• constructing a universal scheme for subtraction of infrared divergences at NNLO;
• achieving a fully automated event generator implementing the subtraction scheme;
• developing a new formalism to understand infrared subtraction to higher perturbative orders.

The innovative, automated approach of ADVANCE-QCD will make it easy to incorporate future theoretical developments into the general and flexible framework created within the project, thus making extremely complex and specialised results immediately accessible to both theoretical and experimental communities, with a significant impact on the scientific programme of the LHC and of future colliders.