Eur. Phys. J. C (2018) 78: 220
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-018-5696-1

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Single top-quark production with sherpa

¹ Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3FD, UK
² Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology, Durham University, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK
³ Theoretical Physics Department, CERN, 1211, Geneva 23, Switzerland

^* e-mail: enrico.bothmann@ed.ac.uk

Received: 15 November 2017
Accepted: 3 March 2018
Published online: 15 March 2018

Abstract

We present results at next-to-leading order accuracy in QCD for single top-quark production in the t, s and tW channels at the lhc at a centre-of-mass energy of 8TeV, obtained with the sherpa event generator. We find them in very good agreement with measured values and quantify their theory uncertainties. Uncertainties stemming from the choice between the four- and the five-flavour scheme are found to be typically of the order of 5–10% over large ranges of phase space. We discuss the impact of parton distribution functions, and in particular of the bottom PDF. We also show how different cuts on QCD radiation patterns improve the signal-to-background ratio in realistic fiducial volumes.